The Snowman, by Jo Nesbø

 978009520276
Vintage Books, 2010
originally published as Snømannen, 2007
translated by Don Bartlett
550 pp.


The Snowman is Nesbø's fifth book to be translated into English, and once again features Harry Hole, a detective working for Oslo's crime squad.  If you want to know more about Harry Hole, the official Jo Nesbo website features Hole's CV, as well as a link to all of the books in the series.  The Snowman is a novel of Scandinavian crime fiction, and my cover has a little sticker on it that says  "The Next Stieg Larsson," but don't believe it. The two are completely different in terms of their writing styles and subjects. Plus, as I've been known to ask before, who exactly made Stieg Larsson the be all and end all of Scandinavian crime fiction? In my humble opinion, Nesbø is the better writer.

The novel begins in 1980, with a young mother having an afternoon fling at her lover's home. Then flash forward and it's 2004, and a young Jonas Becker wakes up to find that there's no one in the house.  His father had gone off to give a lecture in Bergen a day earlier; his mom Birte was there when he went to bed, but now he can't find her anywhere.  Deciding to go to the neighbor's house, he notices that the snowman that had been built in his yard (not by anyone in his family) is now wearing the scarf he'd given his mother for Christmas.  Hole gets the case, and immediately links it in his mind to an earlier case, still unsolved, where a housewife had gone missing  after dropping off her children at a nursery.  Then Harry reveals that he had received an anonymous letter two months earlier that said:

Soon the first snow will come. And then he will appear again. The snowman. And when the snow has gone, he will have taken someone else. What you should ask yourself is this: 'Who made the snowman? who makes snowmen? who gave birth to the Murri? For the snowman doesn't know.'

The mention of the Murri, at least in Harry's mind, makes him believe that a serial killer is at work, because the letter makes reference to a serial killer that Hole had once killed in Australia.  His colleagues aren't so convinced, because Norway's never had a serial killer, but when another woman turns up missing and another snowman is left behind, it begins to look like Harry was right.  The problem is that Hole and the squad have to come up with some link between the missing women that puts them into the killer's sights.  The investigation takes on several twists and turns and adds several suspects, until Harry has to finally take a step back from the feeling he's getting that someone is trying to manipulate him in terms of the case, that he is "part of someone's plan."  At the same time, Harry's got his hands full -- his apartment is going through mold and fungus abatement and his personal life is in its usual angst-ridden condition.  His professional life is right on the edge as his bosses are watching him because of his alcoholism.  Rakel is getting ready to be married.  And there's a new member of the crime squad, Katrine Bratt, who seems to be a perfect match for Harry until she starts unloading some of the unseen baggage she brought along with her.

The Snowman is definitely one of the biggest nail biters in the Harry Hole series.  Not only does the plot have some great twists, but Nesbo spends a great deal of time building up the suspense and getting into the heads of his characters, trying to discover what makes them tick. That may be my favorite part of this series -- Nesbo is great at characterizations throughout all of his novels.  There are a few gruesome scenes in the story, but nothing that seasoned crime fiction veterans haven't seen before.   It is most definitely an edgy and suspenseful book, one I couldn't put down once I started. I have to confess that I found  the ending of the novel to be a bit over the top, but on the other hand, it did  fit well with the rest of the story.  I also must say that I figured out the "who"  before the cops did, but that's okay. The fun is in the getting there, and it was a very wild ride.

  I highly suggest that readers who have not yet had the pleasure of reading Nesbø's series start with The Redbreast (not the first in the series, but the first to be translated into English) and move on from there in order.  Although The Snowman could be read as a standalone, it's much better read as part of the series, especially because of the ongoing development of the characters. If you don't end up with a "wow" going through your mind as you read through it, let's just say I'll be very surprised.

Red April, by Santiago Roncagliolo

9780375425448
Pantheon Books
2009
Originally published as Abril Rojo, 2006
translated by Edith Grossman

"This place is doomed to be bathed in blood and fire forever"

Red April is a mix of political thriller, whodunit and a commentary on the misuse of power in a nation teeming with corruption.  It is a novel steeped in violence and death, often gruesome in detail, and takes place largely  in the city of Ayacucho, Peru. The year is 2000,  when the official line is that "terrorism was eradicated and contines to be eradicated at the present time, " referring to the ongoing series of wars between the military and the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path.  Like many other works of translated crime fiction, there's more than just a mystery at the heart of this book -- most notably, there's the question of an uncertain future for Peru and its people.

Félix Chacaltana Saldívar (Chalcatana) the main character of this novel, had requested and received a transfer to Ayacucho (which means "Place of the dead")  from Lima in his role as a prosecutor.  For most people, this would have been a step backward, or perhaps a demotion, but for Chacaltana, it's a return to his boyhood home. Leaving behind a bad marriage, he jumps into his work with gusto. Punctilious and pedantic by nature, he knows every law, is familiar with every procedure and spends his days writing reports. Normally, the prosecutor's office took care of cases of "drunken fights or domestic abuse, at the most some rape," but a  case comes up in which a man is found dead in a most horrendous manner and lands on Chacaltana's desk.  After some investigation of the case, the prosecutor makes what might be a connection to terrorist activity, but the military government wants him to keep quiet and tell no one, because despite Chacaltan's protests,  "nobody wants to hear about terrorists in Ayacucho":

Look Chacaltana, I'll be totally frank with you, and I hope this is the last time we talk about this subject. The police are controlled by the Ministry of the Interior, and the interior minister is a military man.  Doesn't that tell you something?....Our duty is to shut up and do what we're told. Is it so difficult to get that into your head? Listen, I have no interest in helping you because I don't feel like it. But even if I did want to help you, I couldn't. So don't get me involved in this because you'll fuck up my promotion. Please, I'm begging you! I have a family! I want to go back to Lima! ... Why don't you write a report and close the case once and for all? ...this is an emergency zone. A large part of the department is still classified as a red zone. Laws are legally suspended.

Not only are elections just around the corner, and there are promotions at stake, but Ayacucho is in the midst of Holy Week, which means tourists and massive celebrations.  But Chacaltana isn't to be mollified, and when a second murder is discovered, he is sent to the countryside to monitor the upcoming elections, obviously to get him out of the way.  And even though on his return he finds himself with no work to do "not even an indictment, not even a memorandum," he remains dedicated to solving the case.  The problem is that as the celebrations get into full swing, so does the killer, and eventually Chacaltana finds himself caught up in a situation where he doesn't know who to believe or who to trust.

 Red April is not a tame crime thriller that you can read, put away and forget.  The author paints his scenes with often graphic violence, and at times the reality of the situation is read as though the reader is caught up in a surreal vision.  For example, the description of Yawarmayo, the rural area to where Chacaltana is sent as an election supervisor, is as disturbing as the descriptions of the mutilated bodies.  When he arrives in the countryside, he is greeted by the sight of dead dogs that have been strung up on streetlights wearing signs that say "This is how traitors die."  Explosions in the dead of night are commonplace, along with "howls from the hills." And the reaction of the townspeople? When Chacaltana asks if this is normal, he's told "No. They're pretty calm today." In fact, the entire atmosphere of this book is rather terrifying, all the more so because of the reality beneath the fiction.

The author's depiction of the situation in Peru is bleak:

Ayacucho is a strange place. The Wari culture was here, and then the Chancas, who never let themselves be conquered by the Incas. And then the indigenous rebellions, because Ayacucho was the midway point between Cuzco, the Inca capital, and Lima, the capital of the Spaniards. And independence in Quinua. And Sendero. This place is doomed to be bathed in blood and fire forever....Why? I have no idea. It doesn't matter.

The author has done a most excellent job of transmitting the realities of this most frightening political situation to his readers, most of whom will never be caught up in this sort of horror.

I found it to be an engrossing read that I couldn't put down.  Even though it was difficult to read at times because of its gruesome depictions and its dark and often claustrophobic atmosphere, it's a story that needed telling.  Definitely recommended, but not for readers of light crime.

The Black Minutes, by Martín Solares

9780802170682
Black Cat (Grove/Atlantic), 2010
433 pp
translated by Aura Estrada and John Pluecker

The setting of this novel is Mexico, in the city of Paracuán, a fictional port town,where "everything good disappears right when it's about to arrive."  It is a town where graft, corruption, and violence are an every day reality, where justice is just another word rather than a true concept.   While the police there are busy investigating crimes, the politicians ensure that if the drug cartels are involved, the police direct their attention elsewhere, often leading to the arrest and sentencing of otherwise innocent people.  Journalists who question the system are about as welcome as the plague. 

It is one such journalist who is at the heart of this mystery.  Bernardo Blanco died during an investigation into a case of multiple homicides that had occurred twenty years earlier.  At that time, a number of young girls were killed by a man known only at the time as "The Jackal." The crimes were particularly gruesome, and Blanco, it seems, was on to the true identity of the man and was researching and writing a book.  When he is found murdered, the police chief puts Agent Ramón "Macetón" Cabrera on the case, "the only subordinate, who, in his opinion, could still be trusted." The chief's choice of lead investigators doesn't sit well with another police detective, Agent Chávez, and throughout the story, Cabrera finds himself in a precarious position both physically and politically for good reason: in Paracuán, between the power of the local drug cartel, the politicians in its pockets, the powerful business interests and the criminals whose crimes are often ignored, an honest cop is a rarity.  His questioning begins to produce some interesting leads, but just when he feels he's starting to get somewhere, he's pulled off the case.  It isn't long before Cabrera finds himself in a hospital after his car is deliberately rammed by a pickup -- it seems someone else doesn't want Cabrera on the case either.   As the novel progresses, Solares takes his readers back to the 20-year old Jackal case and its investigation by Detective Vicente Rangel, a former bar musician turned cop.  The story runs along two parallel courses, and eventually both plotlines are united. 

Yet while the book is definitely a novel of crime fiction on the noir side of a police procedural, it also takes several surreal turns.  There are several areas where Solares introduces what is in the minds of the characters via their subconscious, the only orderly respite they have from all of the disorder of the society in which they exist. For example, Rangel brings in a known criminologist, Dr. Quiroz Cuarón, called "The Mexican Sherlock Holmes" by Time Magazine. Cuarón is this close to solving the case, but is plagued by a strange man in black before he can give Rangel his answer.  He also carries antidotes to known poisons in his first aid kit, which comes in handy when he suspects a conspiracy against him. Then there's the story of the author B. Traven (most known for his The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), one of the most famous visitors to Paracuán, who describes in detail how he came to be there, straight out of his novel The Death Ship. And if that's not enough, there are constant references to UFOs and the UFO craze.  But the writing is not random -- at the novel's heart is a look at a corrupt system that Solares seems to pin not only on the influence of the drug cartels, but on the presidency of Luis Echeverria -- a leader well known for his link to the cartels, for corruption and graft, and especially for the brutality of his special forces.  The book truly is, as Junot Diaz notes in his little blurb, "Latin American fiction at its pulpy phantasmagorical finest," but in an outstanding sort of serious way.

Frankly, it's tough to believe that this is Solares' first novel, because it is so intense and so captivatingly well written.  The Black Minutes is a mix of crime fiction and literature; simultaneously, it's an indictment of the corruption and the lack of the chance for real justice in a country where the police seem to be powerless due to several factors, most notably politics and the power of the drug cartels. It also predicts an uncertain future for the lives of Mexican citizens and for the country in general.  The novel is dark, edgy and downright unputdownable, and if you're a reader of crime fiction who doesn't mind the occasional trip into the human psyche or into politics, I highly recommend it. If you don't read crime fiction for the writing but rather the crime, you might still like it... there are enough suspects, a desire to get to the truth of it all, and the why behind the crimes, all classic elements of mystery and crime writing. Personally speaking, however, the crime aspect began to take on more of a secondary role as I got to the end  of the book, and  I came to see it more as a vehicle through which Solares could examine this most distressing situation that currently exists in his country.  

fiction from Mexico

The Troubled Man, by Henning Mankell

9780307593498
Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf
2011; originally published as Den orolige mannen, 2009
translated by Laurie Thompson

Without giving anything away, pretty much everyone knows by now that The Troubled Man is the last Wallander novel, and once again within the space of a month I'm having to say goodbye to not only a favorite series, but to a favorite character as well.  I hate when this happens, but series readers know it's likely inevitable at some point.

"It began with the troubled man," who in this case is Håkan von Enke, retired naval officer, husband of Louise and father of Hans. Hans, as it turns out, is a hedge-fund manager and Linda Wallander's significant other, with whom she has a new baby girl.  At Håkan's 75th birthday party, he takes Wallander aside and tells him a rather odd story about a strange incident that occurred during the Cold War, involving Soviet submarines in a Swedish naval installation.  As Wallander listens with interest, he notices Håkan watching someone watching him.  And then, shortly afterwards, Håkan simply disappears while out on a routine walk.  Even though he vanishes out of Wallander's police jurisdiction, Linda begs her father to find out what happened, and Wallander becomes involved.  But when Louise vanishes without a trace, his involvement deepens, and he begins to wonder if both incidents have anything to do with events that happened in the past, in terms of both politics and long-held family secrets.  But von Enke is not the only troubled man in the story -- that title can also be applied to Kurt Wallander himself.  At 60, with a new granddaughter, he spends a great deal of time looking back at life and his relationships -- with Linda, his ex-wife Mona, his father, his co-workers and old friends, often with regrets, sometimes with questions about what might have been.  But more importantly, he's got another cause for concern: lapses in his memory that begin to worry him, especially as he reflects on his father.

I've loved this series from its beginning, and although I've  liked some books better than others, it's always been consistent even up to this last installment.  Wallander remains the same old gloomy Gus he's always been, deeply involved in whatever case he takes on to the detriment of his health and sometimes his family.  This is a much more morose Wallander in The Troubled Man, but he's still working hard to solve the mystery of the two disappearances.  Unlike most of the other books, however, there's a lot of detail here that tends to bog things down sometimes -- mostly involving Swedish Cold War politics, NATO, the US Government -- that can get a bit tedious after a while.  Not that it's not important to the story...it's just a bit overdone. And Mankell's novels (like those of many author Scandinavian authors)  all have a message to be conveyed dealing with politics or social issues -- that also is the case here.  But what really made this book for me unlike the others in the series  was not so much the mystery or the detective work (both of which are well plotted, by the way), but this time it was Wallander himself. Seasoned Mankell veterans who've followed the series book by book will notice through Wallander's reflections and other devices little reminders of the other Wallander stories scattered throughout, all the more poignant now that this is the last of them.

You don't need to read them all in order, but why wouldn't you? Especially given that this is the last of one of the best crime fiction series out there, wouldn't you want Wallander's entire history before opening this final book?  As Mankell is telling his readers in this story, there are just some things you need to figure out for yourselves, but as for me,  I'm happy I read each one book by book.

Thanks to  Henning Mankell (like he'll ever see this, but what the heck) for the number of hours throughout my life I've had my nose buried in a Wallander novel  -- I've loved every second.

Frozen Assets, by Quentin Bates

9781569478677
Soho Press, 2011
330 pp.

Frozen Assets is both the author's first novel and the first entry of a new series featuring Gunnhildur Gisládottir of the Hvalvik police in Iceland.  Gunna is in her mid-thirties, a widowed mother of two, and used to dealing with small town crimes like speeding and the occasional uncooperative drunk. But things change when the body of a drunken stranger is discovered floating in the water of a small boat dock with no ID except an odd tattoo.  In trying to identify the dead man, her investigation leads her to a company called Spearpoint, a PR firm headquartered in Reykjavik which just incidentally happens to have an interest in a development project in Hvalvik. The inquiries remain pretty routine until one of the staff at Spearpoint reveals to Gunna  that some time back, a friend of the dead man had been killed in a car accident.  Gunna begins to wonder if there is a link between the two deaths, and the investigation takes off from there, with Gunna setting her sights on catching a killer and not letting up until the job is done. 

But wait...there's much more. Interwoven into the main story are entries from an anonymous and elusive "Skandalblogger," a muckraker who seems to have his or her finger on the pulse of what's happening in government circles and in the private lives of connected others, such as the owner of Spearpoint, Sigurjóna Huldudottír and her randy sister, two of the blogger's favorite targets.  The blogger's mission is to expose high-level government corruption and personal greed that affects the average tax-paying citizen, while simultaneously spilling personal secrets that embarrass and enrage the already high-maintenance Sigurjóna,  who wants the Skandalblogger's head on a platter.  As things heat up, the author also  builds on the environment and Iceland's banking crisis of 2008 to add another dimension to the story. All of the various threads are eventually linked together, with enough of a hint of a series yet to be at the end.

Considering that this is the author's first novel, Gunna's character is quite well developed. She's down to earth, common sensical and follows her nose, despite unwanted interruptions from superiors.  She's to the point, often brash in her role as cop, but at the same time, the reader senses some vulnerabilities within her on a personal level.  And she's not a stick-figure gorgeous detective like so many authors insist on having as a main character but more on the bigger side, and is often referred to as the fat cop or even once "a big fat lass with a face that frightens the horses." It is downright refreshing  to have a strong female lead character who isn't too overly concerned with her love life or lack of one, who is built like a real person and in her mid-30s and one who speaks her mind and follows her instincts and her nose.   The author also does a great job with the people you come to dislike in the novel as well -- Sigurjóna, the histrionic owner of Spearpoint whose employees cringe when anything goes wrong knowing they're going to hear about it; the bad guy who has a personality as cold as glacial ice, government officials who don't care about the average citizen, and others as well.

You won't find any romance or silliness here (yay) but what you will find is an intriguing story that is well paced, with a sense of place that adds to the overall atmosphere of the story.  It's definitely not in cozy league, but  it's not quite as edgy or dark as an Indridason novel.  What you get is  something a bit lighter in overall tone that picks up as the story moves along.  The author continues the trend of adding in the political and economic woes of the system, a trend I happen to like,  but I know of many other people who can't get past it and want only the action of the crime and its solution. Personally speaking,  I think incorporating these various elements only adds to the overall sense of place and time, creating something more realistic in the long run.

 It's  difficult to believe that Frozen Assets is the author's first novel. I think this one will appeal to crime fiction readers in general because of the strong lead character, and regular readers of Scandinavian crime fiction will also find it to be a good start to another ongoing series.

The Terrorists, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

9780307390882
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
2010
280 pp
translated by Joan Tate
originally published 1975 as Terroristerna

The Terrorists is the tenth and final book in Sjöwall and Wahlöö's series featuring Martin Beck. In this installment, an unpopular American senator has planned a visit to Sweden, and Beck is chosen as head of the security team for the duration. The biggest worry is terrorist activity, and as Gunvald Larsson finds out while observing in a Latin American country, the terrorists do not play nice.  While Beck is busy with trying to keep the would-be assassins from killing the Senator, he is also investigating a case dealing with pornography, drugs, and murder. Although the main focus of this novels is the measures put into place to prevent the death of the senator from a group who kill, get out and go on to their next job, the authors also reveal that there are other forms of terrorism that exist beyond the political -- and that they exist in every society.

Excellent book, especially the scene when Larsson is in Latin America, but consistently good throughout. My only problem was this nit-picky thing: in the Vintage/Black Lizard edition of Cop Killer, Martin Beck's friend and fellow detective inspector had the last name of  "Allwright," where in The Terrorists, his name was changed to "Content." I know exactly what happened and that each translator does things differently to try to fully convey the nuances of a language, but at the same time, it should be more consistent in a series of editions.  I spent a few minutes puzzled, but it dawned on me that the name change was in the translation.

Now that this series is over and my Vintage/Black Lizard Crime editions are all neatly shelved together, it's sort of a bittersweet kind of moment. I'm rather sad that I've finished all of the books, but the getting there was great.  These authors have put together an outstanding set of novels that no readers of crime fiction should miss, even if you do not agree with the authors' political statements.  The series was launched when Wahlöö sold only a minimal amount of copies of a book of his own political philosophy, and the two authors came to the realization that although no one was paying to read what Wahloo wrote, they would pay to read crime fiction.  Thus began the Martin Beck series, collectively known as "The Story of a Crime."  Actually, they managed to get their various points across quite effectively, and there are some truths to what they say.   On the other hand, as Dennis Lehane points out in the introduction to this particular edition,

One wonders how Sjöwall and Wahlöö managed to live there through the writing of the ten Martin Beck novels, so negative is their depiction of not just the failed welfare state but the physical landscape as well ...The courts don't work, the schools produce little but rot, and the ruling class skims the cream off the top and turns its back as the poor fight over the coffee grounds. 

They've also commented on the state of the police force since it was nationalized, the treatment of the elderly, and a host of other issues that they felt arose as a result of what they saw as the failure of the Swedish welfare state to take care of its people, setting aside the interests of regular citizens for the interests of those most actively involved in capitalism.

But politics aside, Sjöwall and Wahlöö gave us Martin Beck, the detective who started out on a patrol beat and became good at his job on the way up, and all of his co-workers, friends and associates whose lives we've followed throughout all of the books.  And there are many humorous moments throughout the series as well -- the Keystone cop-like antics of some of the patrolmen, the inept Stig Malm, Beck's boss whose job includes a great deal of toadying to his superiors, and there are many standing examples of Sjöwall and Perlöö's wry humor that run throughout all of the novels.  But the best part of these books lie in the authors' ability to create believable plots, to come up with ever-developing characters who often become frustrated to the point where they want to chuck it all but inevitably show up the next day for work (if they go home to sleep at all), and then they throw all of that in with their political opinions, and still manage to create a crime fiction series that stays on task, never getting excessive.  The bottom line is that Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö began these books as their personal mission, but the series stayed consistently excellent, and it has entertained and will continue to satisfy millions of crime fiction enthusiasts around the world.

fiction from Sweden

Cop Killer, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

9780307390899
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
originally published as Polismördaren
 1975
translated by Thomas Teal
296 pp.


It's been about a year now since the events of  The Locked Room.  Martin Beck's life has gained some stability since he met Rhea Nielsen, the landlady of the victim in the previous novel.  Now he's called to the small rural town of Anderslöv, where a young woman, Sigbrit Mård, has gone missing. Described as a "highly normal" person, Sigbrit isn't the type to just up and wander off into another life, so the police suspect foul play.  The two main suspects in the case are her ex-husband and a returning character from the first book in this series, Roseanna, and it is because of the latter that Beck becomes involved in the crime.  Things heat up when Sigbrit's body is discovered, and the press has a field day, putting immense amounts of pressure on the police to solve the crime, and literally trying the case in the newspapers. Beck's superiors in the National Police feel that the public will be happy if Beck takes the most obvious suspect into custody, but they're not the ones directly involved and Beck is frustrated. His instincts tell that him something is just not right here, and that the obvious may not be everything it seems.  While this investigation is going on, there's another crime -- this time against three members of the police force when they make a traffic stop where things go very badly and a shooting occurs.  One of the accomplices in this crime gets away, and the police must try to find him -- but not solely for his participation in this crime.  In the meantime, one of the members of the Homicide Squad begins to wonder if maybe he's had enough. 

The ninth of out ten books in this series, Cop Killer is a thought-provoking novel, with one of the key discussions that runs throughout the story centered on whether or not police should be armed, and whether or not an armed police force is the cause of so many gun-related deaths.  But beyond this debate, the book's title also gives a clue into the growing disenchantment of more seasoned members of the national police force, who realize that their abilities are being hampered by the rise in bureaucratic ineptitude.  For example, Stig Malm, Beck's boss, begins to call the shots from his comfy desk and tell the detectives how to do their jobs, even though in Beck's murder case, Beck knows that if he follows Malm's orders, he may be committing a miscarriage of justice. The same is true for the other case, but Malm is more concerned with pleasing the National Police Commissioner than anything else.  Even worse, to get his name and face in the newspaper, he takes command of operations in which he has no business being involved, and time has proven that things turn out very badly when he insinuates himself into these situations.  But on the whole, the  police force has changed both from within and from without, and not always for the better, and for some people it's just too much to deal with any more. 

Once again, these authors have given their readers a terrific story while continuing their tradition of social critique of what they see as the betrayal of the ideals of the welfare state. You may or may not agree with them or care about a Sweden of 40+ or so years ago, but you can't help but admire their sophisticated plotting talents, their ongoing characters who act and think like real people, and above all their literary talent.  Personally I'm rather sad that the series is almost at an end, because I know I'm never going to experience anything like it again. While there are some well-known modern writers of Scandinavian crime fiction that are quite popular right now  (for example Henning Mankell or Stieg Larsson), I would hate to think that these fine books are being overlooked when they are clearly a part of the best that the Nordic countries have to offer.

Definitely recommended, but you should read the series in order to get the most out of it.

-sigh. On to the last book.