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Showing posts with label Scandinavian crime fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scandinavian crime fiction. Show all posts
Anthony McIntyre ðŸ”– Harry Hole is no longer a cop.


Domiciled in Hong Kong after his previous defence of the Oslo thin blue line, his return to Norway three years after his departure is not welcomed by the force he once served with. It had long grown tired of Harry's do it my way loner approach. The hierarchy, while basking in the glory of his successes, was never too eager to give him credit for his accomplishments, preferring instead to keep him at bottle's length. Something they could then use to flag up his unreliability due to a fondness for the bottle.

What sends him home, three years dry, and pushes him into another investigation is the predicament of Oleg, the son of his erstwhile partner, Rakel. Oleg has been accused of murder, and Harry despite his cynicism returns to the Norwegian capital to prove his innocence or at least satisfy himself that Oleg is guilty after all. With Oleg, both a junkie and pusher, having confessed his guilt, the defence is up against it to evade the bang of the gavel followed by the words take him down. Without police backing Harry assumes the hybrid persona of a private detective-cum-vigilante. Nor is he subject to normal police constraints.

In The Phantom Jo Nesbo has Harry switching lanes. In The Leopard, he was son to a dying dad, Now he has to assume the role of father to Oleg. A character broadening endeavour that adds flavour by creating more roles for Harry than the one dimensional nemesis of serial killers.

While Harry is the mainstay, other characters compete for the reader's attention, which helps ward off any staleness gaining a foothold on the ninth outing. Gusto Hanssen, the drug dealer Oleg stands accused of murdering, is one of the more captivating figures in the book. From shagging his foster mother to selling the most dangerous drug on the streets of Oslo, Gusto lived life on the edge, took a lot of risks and made enemies of the wrong people, including Dubai, the Russian gangster responsible for the distribution of Violin, which was essentially heroin on stilts: the higher up it takes the user, is reciprocated in the fall back down. The street sellers for some reason wear Arsenal shirts. Even if it is a convenient way for the customer to find a supplier, it must be just as easy for the cops to identify the entire network of street level pushers. Nesbo was a promising soccer player on the Norwegian circuit before an injury forced him to retire, so the thought just arises that there was something about the Gunners which he found objectionable!

Then there is the pilot who smuggles the drugs on his flights and the cops who pull strings to have the guilty deemed innocent. There is a lot going on in The Phantom.

For this book Nesbo did more research than for any other in the series. He sought to drill down into the dark underground of Oslo, its drug scene and crime gangs. He described it as the darkest, grimmest book in the Harry Hole series. Opening up with a rat trying to access her den to feed her noisy young only to find the entrance to her abode blocked by the not quite dead yet body of Gusto, the heartbeat of which she can sense. The rat makes a number of appearances throughout, serving to underscore the subterranean grime of the city.

The ninth book by Nesbo in the Harry Hole series, Harry fatigue has not shown its head. There is a magnetism to his character. Harry Bosch, the creation of Michael Connelly, has a similar draw. For me, the trick is not to binge read the series, leave a gap of maybe a year between each. Whatever reading strategy is employed, Nesbo is onto a winner with the Hole genre, having sold millions of books across the globe.

Joe Nesbo, 2012, The Phantom. Vintage Digital. ISBN-13: 978-1446484869

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The Phantom

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ”–The Scandinoir of Jussi Adler Olsen seems to have taken an upward turn prompted by the success of the gripping Scottish Department Q drama. 


The Mercy plot was simply transported to Scotland where it was acted out impressively by Matthew Goode, Alexej Manvelov and crew.

Revenge is said to be a dish best served cold. Settling scores in the 1980s for transgressions that took place in the 1950s is ample time for the heat to seep out of the revenge dish. Denmark, 1987, and Nete Hermansen is on a mission, although not from god but against those who believed they had the right to exercise godlike powers over others. The victim of abuse decades earlier, she hatched her plan with ruthless precision. Betrayed by so many and ultimately abandoned by her husband for the effects of abuse over which she had no control, the blood from the bodies of one or two people would not be enough to slake Nete's thirst for revenge.

One of the abusers in her sights was Curt Wad, a skilled surgeon who used his expertise to sterilise women and girls who did not live up to his morality police expectations. His contempt for women did not extend to his wife. Here, he was the devoted husband attending to her every need as she slowly succumbs to terminal illness. A moraliser rather than a moralist, in his late eighties, Wad is a true believer heavily involved in a far right wing political movement, the type of which we see increasingly goosestepping its way through European towns and cities. Wad is no Justin Barrett, a figure of ridicule. His Purity Party is serious about its ideology, happy to leave the prancing around in Nazi uniform bit to knaves. For Wad:

It was all a matter of genes, and people with slanting eyes or brown skin had no part in the idealized narrative of flaxen-haired girls and boys with strong muscular frames. Tamils, Pakistanis, Turks, Afghans, Vietnamese, all had to be stopped in the manner of any other invasive impurity. Effectively and without hesitation.

A major site for abuse was a women's home on an island off the coast of Denmark. The Sprogø institution which bore more than a passing resemblance to the Mother and baby homes or industrial schools of Ireland so grossly mismanaged by Septic Sisters and Christian Buggerers.

When the case of a missing brothel owner lands on the cold case desk of Carl Mørck in Department Q, the Copenhagen detective can think of better things to do than solve a missing person case from 1987. His mind changes when it is brought to his attention that the same week that the madam disappeared a number of others had done likewise. Not easily shoved into the coincidence folder, it sets even flu blocked noses twitching. Sprogø is the scene of the crime. In influenza stricken Denmark, Department Q has to clear its nasal passages to get on the Sprogo scent, leading back to a sickness infinitely worse than what is causing Danish sniffles. 

The seasoned follower will slide easily into the narrative of Department Q, by now familiar with the trio at its centre, Morck, Assad, and Rose. With the latter two more layers are peeled away giving the reader more insight into what drives them, even distracts them.

The best is left to the end with a superb WTF dish served up at a feast of the macabre. 

Jussi Adler Olsen, 2014, The Purity Of Vengeance. Publisher: Dutton. ISBN-13: ‎978-0142181317

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The Purity Of Vengeance

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ”–Working out who was behind the chestnut murders proved a difficult nut to crack. 


The protective shell served its purpose well. To borrow from the discourse frequently used online to describe relationships, it was complicated. Setting the book down on completion, full knowledge of who the perp was proved no obstacle to deriving maximum enjoyment from the television adaptation. The plot and twists really are that good.

Anticipation that this might be a great novel was not premature. The screen writer for The Killing (easily the best crime drama I have ever watched) was the author of The Chestnut Man. Søren Sveistrup knows how to steer a plot through a maze of teasing possibilities and guide it to a denouement where cymbals clash, chiming with the chequered flag. No running out of steam just to stumble over the finishing line. The bang it started with matures rather than diminishes with time. 

The novel opens up in 1989 where a cop responds to what he assumes is a routine call only to find himself in a slaughterhouse where the victims are not cattle. Despite it being the Halloween season, the trick or terror scene beckoning him to the butchery at the breakfast table was resolved in favour of terror. 

Copenhagen has been the site of some of the best Scandinoir. The villains and cops (not always easy to distinguish in the real world) created by Jussi Adler Olsen and Jo Nesbo have prowled the streets in search of either a victim or a perpetrator. Even a city familiar with killers on the loose had to steel itself when confronted with the Chestnut man, so named because of his calling card, a handmade figurine crafted from two chestnuts and matchsticks. There was a whole row of them in the farmhouse where the 1989 massacre took place. Because of that, comparisons have been made with the modus operandi of the serial killer pursued by Harry Hole in The Snowman. 

Two of the city's cops are drawn together in a race against time, where closing in is still not close enough as the clock runs down on yet another life. Naia Thulin wants out of Homicide rather than to be landed with its most taxing investigation. Her goal is to get into cybercrime which will allow her more time to spend with her child. Mark Hess might count himself lucky to be Homicide at all. Once of Europol where he served a five year stint, a serious faux pas saw him receive the red card and a transfer further down the food chain. Initially their personalities clash only later to settle down as a relationship of mutual dependence evolves which casts aside the gene of irritation. Hess has to refocus and show less concern for redecorating his apartment, and begin to home in on the dark decor of the Homicide Department.

As the case progresses, it seems the one theme common to them all besides one hand of each victim being severed, is the shared history of the people murdered, one rooted in the murky and sordid world of child abuse. The discovery of a fingerprint at the crime scene of one killing is that of a child who disappeared a year earlier and whose mother happens to be a minister in the government of Denmark. How could that be possible?  There is definitely something wrong in the state of Denmark and the pressure mounts on both detectives to solve the case, a pressure reinforced by the reluctance of their boss Nylander to allow the investigation to proceed full throttle. Getting to the minister whose daughter is still missing is not as straightforward as it should be. Nor does the direction of travel taken by the investigators always lead them where they need to go. 

When the plot culminates in a violent crescendo and the identity of the killer is revealed the reader is left with a feeling similar to the moment of revelation in Denmark's The Killing or Canada's Headhunter, superlatives from the crime genre.

Søren Sveistrup, 2019, The Chestnut Man. Penguin. ISBN-13: ‎978-1405939775

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The Chestnut Man

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ”–A transnational dimension is not a new feature to the life of Harry Hole who after the losing a finger to the The Snowman has given the finger to the Oslo police and decamped to Hong Kong. 


Among other far off places investigations have drawn him to are Australia and Thailand. Although great crime drama, the feeling lingers that Scandinoir is more authentic when anchored in Scandinavia. Most of The Leopard was played on home turf.

Not that life was much less stressful for Hole on a compact and congested stretch of land close to mainland China. The grizzled investigator has taken to gambling and owes the Triads money as a result of Harry's luck. Moreover, knowing his drink addiction could not be overcome, his way of dealing with it is to find a new addiction – opium.

In the midst of his self induced haze he is visited by an Oslo cop, Kaja Solness, Her becoming his lover takes a while but for now her task is to entice him back to Norway to help trap a serial killer whose method of murder is a spiked ball placed in the victim’s mouth. Any attempt to free oneself and the spikes erupt. It is a fiendish device causing a painful and terrifying death. The type of thing most people would expect never to come across in the course of their lives unless they find themselves in a Stalinist or fascist torture chamber.

Harry, despite his legendary expertise, is not enticed by the lure of catching Norwegian serial killers: let the Oslo cops do their own work. Police authority doesn't much appreciate him anyway. They will claim his successes while sneeringly regarding him as one of life's losers. But the news that his father is seriously ill is too great a temptation to resist. With a heavy heart he departs Hong Kong for the wintry streets of Norway.

The first two victims are young women, each with dozens of puncture wounds in their mouth. The pressure really mounts when a member of the Norwegian parliament too is murdered. The media really sniff blood and it is not that which the victims excruciatingly drowned in. The hunt for police inefficiency is on.

All the victims have spent a night in a mountain retreat. Apart from that one common thread there is little else to go on. But as ever, the mind of Harry Hole is as penetrating as any spike from a serial killer's ball. 

The killer is not the only nemesis Harry has to contend with. Mikael Bellman of Kripos is a constant irritant. An ambitious and covetous pursuer of others' turf, he wants his own agency to take charge of the country’s homicide investigations which leads to friction with the normal police. The battle between him and Hole is persistent but predictable. There really is only going to be one winner from these clashes. Lesson is: big shovel or not, don't dig a Hole - the kickback is worse than that from a horse. And that is without Harry having had much luck on the horses in Hong Kong. 

The transnational dimension sees the narrative shift to the Congo. The murder weapon is of African origin. It is in the African state that the simmering tension eventually reaches boiling point.

This is the eighth in the Harry Hole series. Some readers might have tired by this stage, feeling perhaps that things have gone a bit stale. And there have been complaints that this outing has been a tad long, with one reviewer suggesting it needs clipped by around a third of its content. Yet for the aficionado, this is sacrilege for which a blasphemy law suddenly sounds not such a bad idea. At no point in the book did the feeling arise that it was a drag. Nesbo tackles the challenge of length with pace and suspense.

Next stop - The Phantom.  

Jo Nesbø, 2012, The Leopard. Vintage. ISBN-13: ‎978-0307743183

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The Leopard

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ”– With Scandinoir, the reader is spoilt for choice. 


There is just so much high quality material out there, with the Department Q series authored by Jussi Adler Olsen holding its own in the front line, invariably scaling the heights of the Danish best seller list, with many being made into movies.

Redemption is the third in the series which has Carl Mørck in the lead investigator role. What demotivation might have insidiously intruded on his investigative skillset is more than compensated for by the combined if not coordinated efforts of Rose Knudsen and Hafez el-Assad, neither of whom is a detective but without whose input cold cases would never lose their chill.

Two young brothers, Tryggve and Poul Holtare, are tied up in a boathouse but they have no idea exactly where. The location was knowledge their kidnapper was careful not to share with them. All they can hear are some frequent noises from outside their confinement which is of no help whatsoever . . . to them. One comes up with an idea. He cuts himself and uses his blood as ink. And so the time honoured message in a bottle requesting help is launched. As a form of SOS it moves at a glacial pace.

Many years elapse between 1996 when the bottle left port and the moment when a report comes through from Scotland where the vessel eventually completed its journey, its contents faded and in parts indecipherable. The bottle had lain in a Scottish police station for years, the sergeant who was its recipient had not even bothered to open it. After his death it ended up broken and only then when the contents spilled out was the matter passed to Copenhagen.

Danish authorities now aware, after much deliberation as to the authenticity of the message, toss the case down to  the basement with the cold case team. With no children reported missing in 1996, the enthusiasm for finding what might never have been lost was not exactly brimming. Such was his scepticism, but for the gun attack in which he survived and saw a colleague die with another left paraplegic, Carl too might have been 'another promising career that had ended up in the traffic department.'

A cold case but one which is linked through the perp to a live hot one. More children are kidnapped. Solving these abductions are made no easier by the less than cooperative attitude of the parents of the child abductees. Their immersion in religious cults throws up a secrecy problem, even to the extent of denying that their children are missing: 'the members of the church will shield each other against the world by whatever means. Also with lies.' Not unlike communist parties in the secular world.

A husband too goes missing periodically but for different reasons and who invariably returns to his deeply unhappy and suspicious wife. While not a hate theologian he emulates one in that his word allows no dissent. He becomes the nemesis of Carl throughout the investigation. The pursuit leads to some edge of the seat stuff, the tension holding right to the end fuelled by the deadlines of the chase.

Even were the reader not to be drawn in by the plot, the characters and their complicated relationships, either between those in Department Q, the department itself and the police hierarchy or an acrimonious clash between the lead investigator and his ex wife, Vigga, make it hard for readers to avert their gaze from the inviting wink,  perfectly cast to hook the perusing eye. Unlike some other character development from elsewhere in Scandinoir, Jussi Adler Olsen does not allow his creations to go stale. Following the characters alone makes the effort worthwhile, as is evident from Rose and her twin sister Yrsa who provides cover when Rose appears to take time out. Unfortunately, when a character has great pulling power but is restricted by death to a standalone outing, the reader feels they have been deprived of something.

Did reaching the denouement need to take so long? Probably not, but in a world 'of new religious movements and sects, all absolutely certain that they alone possessed the definitive solutions to the tribulations of man' this was never going to be an easy religious nut to crack.

Jussi Adler Olsem 2013, Redemption. Penguin. ISBN-13: 978-0141399997


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Redemption

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ”– The bridge between the novel and novella or other forms of short story telling is not always crossed adroitly by those more attuned to long form writing. 


Perhaps it is akin to a marathon runner not being equipped to meet the challenges of the 100 metre sprint. Stephen King managed to straddle both quite successfully. But it is rare that the heights of a work like Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx are ever scaled by those whose writing style is more comfortable with something other than the long haul.

Having been a fan of Jo Nesbo’s work on those occasions when he has wandered off the beaten track of Harry Hole and into standalone novels, I opted to explore his odyssey through the world of the short story. Foregoing the written word, I opted for the audio book, a  format I only picked up with the onset of Covid. Always a great way to absorb the contents of a book while walking.

Years ago while Cage 11 of Long Kesh, while I still had some faith in priest craft, I noticed one of the Redemptorists, who had been in for Novena week, pacing up and down in the cage between events while reading a bible. I later tried it, not with the bible, but found it never worked for me. Apart from me feeling pretentious, the text appeared far too unstable, my eyes unable to synch with the jerky movement of the page, the undulations being anything but smooth.  Occasionally I have seen people, usually women for some reason, read a book as they stroll. Apart from the hazards of not being alert to what is going on around them I was always puzzled as to how they could synchronise. In any event, it is an art that is pretty useless in the rain.

Earphones in, and whether walking the dog or skipping dog poo on Dublin streets – harder to do when reading – via audio I slip into the type of serenity that only books offer.

Jealousy Man, despite its darkness and brooding sense of violence, is so brilliantly narrated that the equanimity effect kicks in rapidly. So good in fact, that when delving into the narrative last thing in the evening while in bed, it is rare to reach the end of the five minute time limit the listener can manually set. On occasion, having forgotten to set the timer, I have awoken to find the book many stations down the line from where I had anticipated disembarking 

Jealousy Man is a twelve story walk through the mirrored halls of murder, intrigue, alternative universes, vengeance, suicide, betrayal, fratricide, filicide, passion and morbid twists, all accompanied by an endless procession of deeply flawed characters.

The first out of the traps, where two people seemingly meet by chance on a plane only to discover otherwise, sets the stage for those that follow, each delivering a performance which can often seem like an audition for a role as the Grim Reaper.  Spreading its wings further afield than his Norwegian homeland, Nesbo never glides close enough to the sun for the wax to melt. Conrad’s heart of darkness that endlessly serves up Scandinoir stays firmly in place. 

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Jealousy Man

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ”– A Swedish housewife vanishes in 1993. 


She seemed to live a predictable existence with her focus on her husband and family. It is out of character for her to go on a solo run and there was no history of her playing away from the matrimonial home.

Within days her body is retrieved and even more shocking to those who knew and loved her, she was the victim of murder.  Lacking the wayward forensic feature of a ricochet or crossfire, a shot to the forehead bore the hallmarks of a clinical execution that suggested gangland. To police minds, whoever took the shot had taken it carefully. But why? Her error seems to have been nothing more than to have lost her way on a journey through woodland.

The investigation develops with Kurt Wallander assuming the lead. While the victim had no interest in extra marital activity someone outside the marriage had an interest in her. A stalker figured and lent itself to the cops concluding they have their man. He too has gone missing which makes the cops even more suspicious and certain that their suspect has a story to tell. Turns out he was only on holiday and his alibi is watertight. Suddenly, their man is not their man after all and so the hunt for the killer widens. 

What at first seems an unrelated incident acquires a different complexion linking Sweden's yawning Ystad to South Africa's Pretoria. Political intrigue causes the narrative to open up like a flower to reveal at its heart a racist hatred and desire to kill. In some of the Scandinavian crime fiction covered in these reviews, the storyline does not always restrict itself to the host country. When it crosses borders it tends to separate the noir from scandi. This dilution runs against the grain of the Scandinoir purist, particularly as Wallander does not actually travel to South Africa as part of the investigation. 

Yet Mankell knows his territory well, having spent much time in Africa where he worked as a theatre director. Particularly endearing is the ongoing dialogue between the dead and the living, providing as it does considerable insight into native African cultural traditions. The irreligious mind might resile from such constructs but they are so real to those who have culturally imbibed them alongside milk from their mothers' breasts, that while their presence can be regarded as myth, the power of myth should never be understated. 

Wallander's journey takes him abroad but not geographically. He crisscrosses the terrain of his own mind which is not the terra firma he might have hoped for. He ventures off the radar during the manhunt. The flaws in a truly mercurial investigator are breaking through. In most Western police forces the path he took would have led to the exit door.

The character development is top notch: Menkell has the reader feeling the malevolence of Wallander's foreign adversaries, who are not all from the same nation. The Ystad detective finds himself pitched against a hybrid force formed from dying but competing ideologies: their death rattle no less dangerous than their lives' work in the dark arts.

Wallander shares with Harry Hole and Harry Bosch that obsessive devotion to catching killers. Such characters hardly exist in real life if for no other reason than their phenomenal success rates. How many murders can there be for these guys to solve?

Of the three Wallander novels read so far Faceless Killers remains the best. White Lioness comes with a great plot, political intrigues, merciless operatives who worship at the altar of dictatorship, while drilling down into the methodical intricacies of police procedure when working a murder case. Its drawback is that it stretched on beyond what was necessary to make it brilliant. 

Henning Mankell, 2003, The White Lioness. Published @ Vintage. ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0099464693


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White Lioness

Anthony McIntyre  ðŸ”– As a devotee of novels featuring the booze addled detective, Harry Hole, I am never dismayed when his creator, Jo Nesbo, creates a hole of a different sort which he then adroitly plugs with characters other than Harry.
 

Nesbo’s standalone novels are invariably worth picking up. For the vintage reader, they should never be reason for disappointment.

The Kingdom is longer than previous departures from Harry Hole, which is perhaps its one weak spot although by no means an Achilles Heel. Just that it takes a bit too long to warm up. For those who persist - and it is recommended that they should - this is quite the story.

The Opgard family is well known in the locality of Os, a fictional small town to the West of Oslo. The idea for the setting seems to have come from the author having parents who hailed from a background that resembled the type of existence described in Os. Nesbo as a youngster often visited the villages and breathed in the culture.

Roy Opgard narrates the story. He has remained at home, situated in a Norwegian mountainy region, working in a roadside service station, while his younger brother Carl had opted to go to the US to study. The boy's Cadillac besotted father had lived in the States for some years while a child. This adds a US twang to the tale although not as pronounced as that in Headhunters. Many residents from Norwegian villages have over the decades emigrated to the States, so the awe with which townsfolk and villagers have viewed the seemingly low hanging fruit across the Atlantic if they can only make it to the Big Apple seeps into the narrative.

Roy had always felt it his duty to look out for his younger sibling when they had lived in the same home, sleeping in a shared bunk bed set. Distance does not always make the heart grow fonder. So when Carl returns from Canada with his wife Shannon, much to the surprise, even the mild irritation, of Roy, he has ideas for building a state of the art hotel on family land. The brothers had inherited the land when their parents died in a car that had plunged over the cliff beside the family home. An accident only for the fact that a number of other cars had taken a similar downward spiral. 

Carl's wife is very much a woman of set ideas. She is the architect and is not open to alternative design plans. Her presence introduces a tension, but not between her and Roy. Where tension exists between them it is of the chemical type. 

Before long, the dark side emerges. There is history here. A sheriff had drowned many years earlier - Sigmund Olsen. His car had veered off the road. His son Kurt, now wearing his late father's badge, is a thorn in the side of Roy, sniffing around places the elder Opgard would rather see off limits. Attired like a US rancher he is as persistent as Shannon is obstinate, particularly when it comes to the death of his father. He feels Roy has created a wall of impenetrability behind which lurks some truth that Kurt intends to extract.

A journalist took to asking questions due to misgivings he harboured about Carl's motives. But there is a relationship factor at play - best described as complicated. The plans for the hotel inevitably create tensions with some locals but is torched before construction is complete. There is a lot of burning in this novel, the result of smouldering passions, easily sparked.

While Roy comes over as an all round likeable guy, the type to pull your car out of a ditch in the small hours during a blizzard, there lurks a suspicion that he might just send your car careering over the side of something deeper than a ditch. While Carl as a child unintentionally shot the family dog, it was Roy who cut its throat to end its misery. To boot, he has form for using his fists. While he no longer goes for the gratuitous violence of his youth, he does uses it, or the threat of it, for a very specific purpose and is ruthlessly calculating while never alienating the reader. In his standalone works Nesbo has a tendency absent from the Hole series of soliciting sympathy for the perpetrators of bad acts.

A tale like this situated in a community thrown together by proximity without being close knit, invariably brings out the skeletons. Familiarity does not just breed contempt, it peels away the protective film that people wrap around the more clandestine aspects of their lives. There is a pulsating tension which when ignited can bring out all the old but never quite forgotten hillbilly hatreds. Murder and child rape have a home in Os.

When Roy becomes as protective of Carl’s wife as he was of Carl, the reader is invited to anticipate the possibility of yet another car joining the junk yard at the bottom of the cliff.

This is The Kingdom of love and murder, themes that weave their way through Nesbo's writing. When the end comes it is quintessential tragedy, where those who win do so only to the extent that they minimise their losses. By the time the curtain closes, amongst those left standing, there are no winners. Everybody loses.

Jo Nesbo, 2020, The Kingdom. Publisher: ‎Harvill Secker. ISBN-13: ‎978-1787300798

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The Kingdom

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