As a retired psychotherapist, I love a good book with complex characters that stand up to analysis. As a moody introvert, I especially enjoy untangling a set of clues in an atmosphere of suspense. Given that I live in a remote, wild area with plenty of snow and extreme weather, I am a good judge of stories about people being pitted against the elements. Finally, I am always curious to learn more about indigenous cultures since I live near more tribal land than anywhere in the US except Alaska. And, of course, I’m a mystery writer!
A Time Best Book of the Year · An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year · A People Best Book of the Year · Winner of the CWA Silver Dagger Award · A Finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel
First published in 1992, Peter Høeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow instantly became an international sensation. When caustic Smilla Jaspersen discovers that her neighbor--a neglected six-year-old boy, and possibly her only friend--has died in a tragic accident, a peculiar intuition tells her it was murder. Unpredictable to the last page, Smilla's Sense of Snow is one of the…
I was born in Sweden in a northern fishing town. My parents come from Lapland. I always loved reading, especially crime novels. My parents used to drop me off at the local library and pick me up at closing time. When young, I worked for the local newspaper and had dreams of becoming a journalist. Instead, it became a corporate career with postings all over the world. When I picked up writing again in my early forties, it didn’t come together for me until I put a dead body in there, and thus I found myself writing thrillers. Nordic Noir is a genre I am particularly fond of. It is crime, where setting in the broadest use of the word (physical, mental, geographical, climate…) is allowed to take space. Below you will find five of my favourites.
At a home for troubled girls, a young girl has been brutally murdered. One of the other girls has gone missing and the murder weapon is discovered in her bed. But is it really that easy? Detective Inspector Joona Linna pieces the evidence together.
Lars Kepler is the pseudonym of husband and wife team Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril. The Joona Linna series follows Linna, Detective Superintendent at the police's National Operations Department, and Saga Bauer, an Operational Superintendent at the Swedish Security Service. The diverse viewpoints and short chapters give an exciting and varied read.
A terrifying new thriller in the the internationally bestselling Killer Instinct series: Detective Joona Linna finds himself on a collision course with a terrifying killer whose past is more troubling than anyone could imagine.
“One of those rare books that is truly difficult to put down.” —New York Journal of Books
A brutal killing spree at a home for wayward teens. One girl is dead, another is missing. Joona Linna scrambles to track her down before the death toll mounts.
I wanted to write crime fiction from a young age. I took a Biomedical Science degree, hoping to follow this with a PhD in Forensics but soon realised I didn’t want to spend the rest of my working life in a lab. So I took a Master’s degree in Science Communication and became a health journalist and editor instead. I knew my own crime novel needed to feature a journalist. My main character, Shanna Regan, has spent her life travelling, whereas my own job has always been desk-based in the UK. Maybe this is why I love reading crime novels that whisk me off to other countries (in my head)!
I enjoy reading crime novels that feature other cultures or countries. Dark Pines (and the series that follows) whisked me off to deepest, darkest Sweden.
The main character, a local reporter called Tuva Moodyson, is a strong female lead. She’s young, feisty and tenacious. Her deafness makes her multidimensional, overcoming life’s challenges, without author Will Dean resorting to common tropes of crime fiction protagonists (e.g. cynical, alcoholic detective).
Dark Pines features a host of memorable and eccentric characters in a creepy and claustrophobic small town, giving this quirky book a Twin Peaks vibe. For me, the setting was a character in its own right – with the visceral descriptions of the dark pine forests.
Selected for ITV's Zoe Ball Book Club and shortlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker prize
A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year
'Will Dean's atmospheric crime thriller marks him out as a talent to watch. Dark Pines is stylish, compelling and as chilling as a Swedish winter.' Fiona Cummins, author of Rattle
'Atmospheric, creepy and tense. Loved the Twin Peaks vibe. Loved Tuva. More please!' C.J. Tudor, author of The Chalk Man
For fans of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects and Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, a brand new debut crime writer introduces a Scandi-noir Tuva Moodyson Mystery…
I'm an engineer with a PhD in electrical engineering and have spent more than twenty years of my career in the nanoelectronics industry researching how to create better electronic chips. The need to tell stories has always been there, but I never really envisioned a career as a writer. It wasn't until my 40s that I decided it was time to rekindle that passion for writing. I've always loved the dark atmosphere of Scandinavian noir TV series like The Killing and The Bridge with their often flawed and intriguing characters. So when I decided to write my first novel, it was almost a given that it was going to be a Nordic Noir thriller.
Giles Blunt's books show that Scandinavia does not have a monopoly on Nordic Noir. In 2017 we were on vacation in Canada and quite by chance I saw an episode of Cardinal on TV. Only one episode from the first season, but enough to keep me captivated by the story set in the snowy landscapes of Algonquin Bay in Canada. I knew it was based on a book series. When I got home, I immediately found the author and started reading. I chose this book because of some amazing passages that capture the essence of Nordic Noir, among others a frozen body in the ruins of an abandoned hotel in the woods. The book presents a clever plot where seemingly unrelated threads are ingeniously weaved together.
It's not unusual for John Cardinal to be hauled out of a warm bed on a cold night in Algonquin Bay to investigate a murder. And at first this dead body, sprawled in the parking lot of Motel 17, looks pretty run of the mill: the corpse has a big bootprint on his neck, and the likely suspect is his lover's outraged husband. But the lover has gone missing. And then Delorme, following a hunch, locates another missing woman, a senator's wife from Ottawa, frozen in the ruins of an abandoned hotel way back in the woods. Spookily, she was…
Why
isn’t there a question mark in the title? The bright cover caught my eye.
Vigdis Hjorth is a leading novelist in Norway. She creates three vivid
characters: Mother, Sister, Daughter, and this is a stalker story of familial
retribution.
The abused and abandoned daughter is our compelling narrator: she
seeks recognition and revenge. Hjorth
uses the metaphors from Scandi-Noir crime fiction: the cabin buried in the
forest, bitter cold turning to snow, a lone elk moving through the darkness.
The tension in this sinister emotional tale is almost unbearable, as the
daughter stalks her prey: spying on her mother’s movements, visiting the
father’s grave, hiding behind dustbins, plotting access to the flat. I felt
completely involved in this terrifying drama and wolfed down every page.
'To mother is to murder, or close enough', thinks Johanna, as she looks at the spelling of the two words in Norwegian. She's recently widowed and back in Oslo after a long absence as she prepares for a retrospective of her art. The subject of her work is motherhood and some of her more controversial paintings have brought about a dramatic rift between parent and child. This new proximity, after decades of acrimonious absence, set both women on edge, and before too long Johanna finds her mother stalking her thoughts, and Johanna starts stalking her mother's house.
I'm an engineer with a PhD in electrical engineering and have spent more than twenty years of my career in the nanoelectronics industry researching how to create better electronic chips. The need to tell stories has always been there, but I never really envisioned a career as a writer. It wasn't until my 40s that I decided it was time to rekindle that passion for writing. I've always loved the dark atmosphere of Scandinavian noir TV series like The Killing and The Bridge with their often flawed and intriguing characters. So when I decided to write my first novel, it was almost a given that it was going to be a Nordic Noir thriller.
It may be a cliche but my first experience with nordic noir was The Killing (Forbrydelsen). This Danish TV series in which inspector Sarah Lund goes in search of the murderer of a young girl fascinated me enormously. Not only because of the oppressive atmosphere that grabs you by the throat at times, but also because of the fantastic character development. The series was created by Søren Sveistrup, the author of the equally magisterial The Chestnut Man. The book begins when a young woman is found horribly mutilated in a playground on a chilly October morning. Next to her is a doll made of chestnuts and sticks. When a chestnut man is also found at the scene of a subsequent murder, it is clear that a serial killer is at work.
I was born in Sweden in a northern fishing town. My parents come from Lapland. I always loved reading, especially crime novels. My parents used to drop me off at the local library and pick me up at closing time. When young, I worked for the local newspaper and had dreams of becoming a journalist. Instead, it became a corporate career with postings all over the world. When I picked up writing again in my early forties, it didn’t come together for me until I put a dead body in there, and thus I found myself writing thrillers. Nordic Noir is a genre I am particularly fond of. It is crime, where setting in the broadest use of the word (physical, mental, geographical, climate…) is allowed to take space. Below you will find five of my favourites.
Girls is not written by a Nordic author but feels very Nordic Noir… so I am giving it an honourable mention.
Jack and Fanny’s baby daughter has died, and they are struggling to cope. Jack, a Vietnam Vet, is trying desperately to find ways to bring them back together. A fourteen-year-old girl goes missing, and Jack turns his focus to finding her, as if this could be their redemption.
Girls is the perfect read. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Clean prose, irresistible characters so finely drawn. Voices that resonate. Add to this a very suspenseful plot…
In the unrelenting cold and bitter winter of upstate New York, Jack and his wife, Fanny, are trying to cope with the desperate sorrow they feel over the death of their young daughter. The loss forms a chasm in their relationship as Jack, a sardonic Vietnam vet, looks for a way to heal them both.
Then, in a nearby town, a fourteen-year-old girl disappears somewhere between her home and church. Though she is just one of the hundreds of children who vanish every year in America, Jack turns all his attention to this little…
Antti Tuomainen is a total original, a combination of Scandi noir and almost slapstick comedy, a genius of incongruity rendered, somehow, credible and even inevitable by the sheer skill of the author.
The Moose Paradox is the book that, in a difficult year, made me laugh loudest and jump highest from my seat and convinced me that anything at all can be overcome with courage, humor, and a substantial dose of luck.
It’s filled with wit, subtle and otherwise, unforeseen and yet entirely believable twists and, well, just ‘wow’ moments (I say this as a reader and as a – somewhat envious - fellow writer). It’s also, in its idiosyncratic way, rather sexy.
Insurance mathematician Henri has his life under control, when a man from the past appears and a shady trio take over the adventure park's equipment supply company ... Things are messier than ever in the absurdly funny, heart-stoppingly tense second instalment in Antti Tuomainen's bestselling series...
'In these uncertain times, what better hero than an actuary?' Chris Brookmyre
'One of those rare writers who manages to deftly balance intrigue, noir and a deliciously ironic sense of humour ... a delight' Vaseem Khan
'What a book! Antti has managed to put the fun into funerals and take it out of fun…
I’ve been exploring Scandinavian authors for several years after working my way through the American masters of the genre (Chandler, McDonald, Parker, Burke, Stout, and others). For some reason, Scandinavians seem a lot more vicious in their writing, crafting murder scenes that are beyond gruesome. After reading the works of several Icelandic authors, I was inspired to go there and see firsthand what I was reading about, then to create my own mystery in that setting.
I wish I could write like Jo Nesbø. His detective, Harry Hole, faces the worst of the worst sadistic criminals and somehow succeeds, but not always without cost, both to himself and those near to him. In this first Hole story, the Oslo police detective is dispatched to Australia to investigate the murder of a Norwegian citizen. The case is complex, he falls in love, falls off the wagon, and finds suspects who later become victims. Nesbø has a way of keeping you guessing, with plenty of red herrings, a slew of suspects and many grisly deaths along the way. The prose is precise, inventive, compelling. In short, a master at the craft, even in his first story.
Detective Harry Hole is meant to keep out of trouble. A young Norwegian girl taking a gap year in Sydney has been murdered, and Harry has been sent to Australia to assist in any way he can.
HE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO GET TOO INVOLVED.
When the team unearths a string of unsolved murders and disappearances, nothing will stop Harry from finding out the truth. The hunt for a serial killer is on, but the murderer will talk only to Harry.
In my career, first as a screenwriter for film and TV and now as a crime writer, I learned early on that you must never bore your audience. I want to entertain my readers, so my stories should always keep them glued to the pages. However, the reader should also be left with new reflections after finishing the book. Crime fiction is often perceived as nothing but plot, action, and blood, without any depth or character development at all. I beg to differ. My list presents five books proving that crime fiction can be both intriguing, nerve-wracking, and mind-blowing while simultaneously serving as the perfect mirror of the world we're living in today.
The first book I read by the Swedish master of suspense.
There's nothing like being caught by a good book: Just one more chapter, even though it's the middle of the night and work starts in three hours.
Almost like getting kidnapped with a small but significant difference: you don't want to be released.
Without Mankell, there would be no Millennium series, and this book is one of the reasons I started to write in the same genre. It's a long but, at the same time, quick read.
The characters are portrayed as real human beings with multiple flaws and shortcomings. I don't want to reveal the plot here, but I promise you: this murder case is like nothing else.
It is Midsummer's Eve. Three young friends meet in a wood to act out an elaborate masque. But, unknown to them, they are being watched. Each is killed by a single bullet.
Soon afterwards, one of Inspector Wallander's colleagues is found murdered. Is it the same killer, and what could the connection be? In this investigation Wallander is always, tantalisingly, one step behind.
