Of course it is not an either/or situation. Having never been to Sweden, when I think of this country I usually conjure up images from Igmar Bergman films or photos of Mats Sundin fishing in the off season. What I don’t think of is a crime ridden nation with terrible murders happening in every corner followed quickly by determined and brilliant detectives who are hot on the trail.

[In fact, after writing this entire post, I realized that several of my co-workers have already written about Swedish mysteries so I urge you to check out some previous entries on this topic. So this will be more of a refresher of what came before…we librarian types read a lot of mysteries apparently]

Lately, with the emergence of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy better known as The Girl…with the Dragon Tattoo, who Played with Fire, who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Sweden’s reputation as an excellent source of quality mysteries has been solidified. Unlike the rest of the planet’s population, I have not read these books, but I have become a fan of another Swedish crime writer: Henning Mankell.

After finishing the entire run of Ian Rankin’s books featuring the Scottish detective John Rebus I was looking for another series to embrace. At first I considered Peter Robinson but instead opted for Mankell and his main detective Kurt Wallander. I’m currently on the fourth Wallander book Sidetracked.  In a slightly more modest way than Larsson and his Lisbeth Salander character; Mankell and Wallander’s Sweden seems to have captured the imagination of the reading public and now the viewing public can enjoy these works as they have recently been made into TV movies entitled Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh as the main hero.

But Swedish crime novels aren’t limited to these two authors.  Long before either Larsson or Mankell even considered their writing careers there was Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo who co-wrote the Martin Beck books in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  I don’t read a lot of straight mysteries (I’m more into the Jim Thompson, James M. Cain variety of crime novels) but from what I can gather, these two authors were pioneers in the police procedural and went on to influence a whole host of mystery writers who came after them.  Some time last year I read the first book of the Beck series and will definitely go back for more in the future.  

A quick search of the VPL catalogue also comes up with several other Swedish mystery/crime novels which I am not familiar with but look very promising. Among the available titles are: Missing by Karin Alvtegen, The Black Path by Asa Larsson, The Shadow Woman by Ake Edwardson, The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg, and the aforementioned Sjowall and Wahloo who wrote a few books found in our collection, including The Locked Room: The Story of A Crime. A google search will get you many more Swedish authors not mentioned here.

So with all these writers turning out quality books (wikipedia has individual entries for 30 Swedish different crime novelists!), the mystery remains for me: Why Sweden? I may have to read many more of these books before I get to the bottom of it all.