This summer I overdosed on mysteries, one right after another. I could not stop. Obsessive compulsive disorder? The weather made me do it!
Was it because I loved Nancy Drew so much as a young reader?
I don’t have a therapist, at least not right now, but I wonder what she or he might say. Actually maybe I should see a therapist because I read one Scandinavian writer after another. If you like involved, atmospheric, unusual, character-driven, moody mysteries jump right in to the “Nordic Mystery Boom” (coined from a Los Angeles Times article).
First, I read every single Inspector Wallander book written by Henning Mankell. You will get hooked! All taking place mostly in Skane, Sweden, the crimes and the criminals are chilling. But so much else is written into the mysteries. Wallander worries about his health, his aging father who gets Alzheimer’s, the death of a colleague, the future of his only daughter, and his divorce.
Each mystery starts out so innocently, with a crime committed in the first chapter and the reader has no idea why. I especially liked “The White Lioness,” in which the reader immediately reads of a real estate agent being shot to death in a house in the Skane countryside. Wallander cannot figure it out; was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time? This mystery carries over into Africa and a plot to kill Nelson Mandela. It was terrific!
I am on the last of the series “Firewall” and hope to finish before I start my book discussion group. These are not cozies!
I thought I would take a break from Sweden but ended up devouring Hakan Nesser’s “Woman With a Birthmark” with Inspector Van Veeteren. A woman seeks revenge on four men who thought they had buried a secret long ago.
I continued with Sweden and read “Black Path,” by Asa Larsson, which starts out with a woman’s body being found, dead of course, in an ice fishing shack. Who is she and why?
Kjell Eriksson in “The Princess of Burundi,” has Ola Haver and Ann Lindell explore the brutal death of a working class man. All of these Swedish writers offer commentary on contemporary society. I began to think I would never leave Sweden, but I did.
Karin Fossum’s Norwegian Inspector Sejer is just as introspective and unpredictable as Mankell’s Wallander. I loved “Indian Bride,” a sad story of a middle-aged bachelor who plans for his bride from India to join him in his small Norwegian town. He awaits her arrival but she is murdered not far from his home.
“Black Seconds” begins with a child riding her yellow bike in the neighborhood only to never return. Fossum’s mysteries are very character-driven.
Last but not least I love the Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason, whose atmospheric, involved mysteries take place in Reykjavik and feature police inspector Erlendur.
“Silence of the Grave” is absolutely haunting. A young female skeleton is found at a building construction site and is finally determined to be around 50 years old, putting her death back around World War II. Strands of stories and long forgotten family secrets of abuse in the Icelandic countryside make for a riveting mystery.
Should I see a therapist? Nope. Reading is therapy no matter what one reads. Books, and tapes and CD’s are all free for loan from the library. Therapists cost money. I’ll stick with my library.
Margot Sullivan is a part-time reference librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood.
