The Truth Behind the Lie by Sara Lövestam was first published in Sweden as Sanning med modifikation in 2015. It was awarded The Swedish Detective Acadamy’s prize for the best crime debut. In 2017 the French awarded it the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for the best foreign novel.

Lövestam drew on her first-hand knowledge of working with Iranian refugees to detail the trials and tribulations of an illegal immigrant who makes a living as a private investigator.

Synopsis

Kouplan was a journalist in his Iranian homeland but was forced to flee the regime. Now he is an illegal immigrant in Stockholm, with one eye open for the police whilst the other is searching for his next meal.

A man needs to eat, so Kouplan places an ad in the local paper.

“Private detective. If the police can’t help, call me!” 

Pernilla lost her six-year-old daughter, Julia, a week earlier. She responds to the ad in a state of torment and desperation as she has refused to contact the authorities.

When Kouplan returns to the shopping mall where Julia was last seen and starts his search, it becomes clear that everything is not as it seems. Why wouldn’t the mother of a missing six-year-old contact the police? The facts don’t tie together, and the only explanation Kouplan can see creates more questions than answers.

Review

The Truth Behind the Lie by Sara Lövestam is not a normal blast of Nordic Noir. It is a methodical and slow-moving psychological mystery that explores the disappearance of a young girl and the relationship between the girl’s distraught mother and the illegal immigrant she hires to find her.

Written through three sets of eyes — those of Kouplan, Pernilla, and a missing child — the story broaches some grisly themes. It tackles human trafficking, paedophilia, violence and mental illness. Whilst the topics are disturbing, the writing isn’t graphic or lurid. Instead, the novel is a light and easy read that is almost chatty in tone.

Where the novel wins out is its exploration of what it means to be an illegal immigrant. Kouplan is without real friends or security, hunted by the state and in mortal fear of being sent back to the country you fled from. The description of his daily existence is bleak.

Short on action but long on perspective, Lövestam highlights some unpleasant truths that you will never read in the tabloid press. She highlights — what, for many, is — a profoundly unpleasant reality. That chatty tone lulls you into a false sense of security. If you start empathising, what begins as a light read has distressing depths.

Excerpt

“Do you like fish sticks?”

Kouplan is fairly sure he likes fish sticks. At any rate, they smell wonderful and start a minor revolution in his stomach and they certainly wouldn’t contain any pork. Still, he asks just to be sure. Pernilla stares at him.

“Are you Muslim?” 

He shrugs. When is anyone a Muslim?

“So why don’t you eat pork?”

Her question might be antagonistic, or might be just a question. He can’t tell.

“Why don’t you eat dog?” he asks back.

Pernilla makes a face and raises her eyebrows as she flips the fish sticks in a well-practiced way.

“You must really like pigs, then,” she says.

“Not all pigs,” he replies.

He doesn’t like his own joke; it is not right to call people names, not even the police, though they hunt for him all over the city. You have to be above it all.

At any rate, Pernilla smiles.

“Some pigs are easier to love than others, I imagine.”

The Truth Behind the Lie by Sara Lövestam

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The Hunting Dogs by Jørn Lier Horst won the Norwegian Riverton Prize in 2012. The crime writers of Scandinavia awarded it their coveted Glass Key the following year.

Synopsis

Seventeen years ago, Rudolf Haglund was convicted for abducting the daughter of a fashion mogul, twenty-year-old Cecilia Linde. Judges have released Haglund from jail following an appeal. His legal council proved that somebody had fabricated the forensic evidence used to convict him.

Detective William Wisting’s superiors have suspended him for his role in the case. He is under investigation for planting the fake evidence that led to Haglund’s imprisonment. The media are baying for blood.

Meanwhile, an unknown assailant assaults Wisting’s daughter, an investigative journalist, whilst she probes the murder of a local man.

If Wisting hasn’t got enough on his plate, a second girl has disappeared.

Review

Wisting is unusual for a (fictional) detective. He doesn’t drink excessively, has a normal paternal relationship with his daughter, and has few skeletons in his cupboard. Horst — an ex-policeman — wanted to create a realistic representation of Norwegian policing. Whilst the resulting plot lacks cliffhangers and nail-biting drama, it wins as a rational and believable novel. This lack of histrionics makes the story’s thrills all the more suspenseful because of their credibility.

William Wisting is, without a doubt, a good cop; he is no Dirty Harry. The accusation of the fabrication of evidence and a fixation on a single possible culprit is a palpable slur on his character. It is also a shrewd observation of the realities of police work.

You find something that points in a certain direction and from there all further investigations are geared towards it. All other perspectives are neglected in the hope of finding out as quickly as possible. Everyone gets tunnel vision and looks for new information to support the central hypothesis.

What was initially an open-ended investigation is shockingly focused on one thing, one person. A broad-based investigation turns into a boiler run. ~Jørn Lier Horst (Krimi Forum)

Horst neatly mirrors this obsession with a single culprit in the original abduction case and the internal investigation into Wisting.

Horst enhances his tale by overlaying the police enquiry with the investigation by Wisting’s daughter. The journalists’ pursuit of a potential offender is a first-class set piece. It is easy to understand how Horst’s fans rate him alongside Henning Mankell.

The Hunting Dogs by Jørn Lier Horst is the eighth of his William Wisting series, though when it was first translated, only the third to be available in English. Consequently, the book has a short preface that recounts Wisting’s history, parts of which play second fiddle to the main storyline. The only failing of the novel is that, as a stand-alone read, there is a slightly disturbing feeling that you are last to the party, though this doesn’t detract from the plot.

For lovers of Scandinavian police procedurals, William Wisting may be Kurt Wallander‘s successor.

Excerpt

Crows flapped like dark shadows across the flanks of brown ploughed fields. He pulled into the side at a sign pointing along the gravel track to the left, Gumserød farm, and halted where the witness on the tractor had said the white Opel had been parked. 

The young woman whose photograph Nils Hammer had shown him was in his mind, the one with the yellow bow in her hair. Linnea Kaupang. Somewhere, her despairing parents were waiting. Hammer knew what had to be done, but Wisting felt bad, not being able to contribute.

He forced himself to concentrate on seventeen years back in time. 

Almost all murders in Norway are solved, which brings its own pressure. He was not the only one who had felt the Cecilia case heavy on his shoulders. When Rudolf Haglund appeared it felt as if a burden had been lifted from them all and Wisting experienced the satisfying feeling of success: of finally making a breakthrough, having a name, a suspect on whom the investigation could focus. But all they had achieved was the construction of their own version. They had invested their professional pride into drawing a convincing picture of Rudolf Haglund as a murderer. 

Wisting had seen this before. Pressure and the demand to solve a case could lead to rash conclusions. The investigators formed their own impressions of how elements hung together based on the first evidence. After they drew their conclusions, an unconscious process had been set in motion by which they sought confirmation. They had developed tunnel vision and sought evidence to fit their theory, become like hunting dogs following the scent. All sidetracks and possible distractions were passed over. It was Rudolf Haglund they were after, and they circled round him.

The Hunting Dogs by Jørn Lier Horst

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Death Deserved by Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger is far more outrageous than Horst’s Wisting series. If, however, you’d enjoy damsels in distress and a serial killer with a flare for the dramatic, this is just the thing.

Horst and Enger conjure up a rollicking read.

Publisher’s Synopsis

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography, Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number ‘one’ has been pinned to the TV.

Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missing-persons investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of a hostage situation nineteen years earlier, when he killed the father of a five-year-old girl. Traces of Nordstrøm soon show up at different locations, but the appearance of the clues appear to be carefully calculated … evidence of a bigger picture that he’s just not seeing…

Blix and Ramm soon join forces, determined to find and stop a merciless killer with a flare for the dramatic, and thirst for attention.

Trouble is, he’s just got his first taste of it…

‘An exercise in literary tag-teaming from two of Norway’s biggest crime writers with a bold new take on the serial-killer-as-twisted-artist … the start of a series with potential’ ~ Sunday Times

‘Now — what happens when you put two of the most distinguished writers of Nordic noir in tandem? Death Deserved by Thomas Enger and Jørn Lier Horst suggests it was a propitious publishing move; a ruthless killer is pursued by a tenacious celebrity blogger and a damaged detective’ ~ Financial Times

Read a full review of Death Deserved by Jørn Lier Horst, and Thomas Enger at Buried Under Books

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The Katharina Code by Jørn Lier Horst won the 2019 Petrona Award (an award for the best Scandinavian crime novel). It is the twelfth novel in Horst’s William Wisting series.

The judges described it as “an outstanding and thrilling police procedural” in which “the author takes established tropes – the ‘cold case’, the longstanding suspect, the dogged nature of policework – and combines them in ways that are innovative and fresh.”

Publisher’s Synopsis

Twenty-four years ago Katharina Haugen went missing. All she left behind was her husband Martin and a mysterious string of numbers scribbled on a piece of paper.

Every year on October 9th Chief Inspector William Wisting takes out the files to the case he was never able to solve. Stares at the code he was never able to crack. And visits the husband he was never able to help.

But now Martin Haugen is missing too.

As Wisting prepares to investigate another missing persons case he’s visited by a detective from Oslo. Adrian Stiller is convinced Martin’s involved in another disappearance of a young woman and asks Wisting to close the net around Martin.

But is Wisting playing cat and mouse with a dangerous killer or a grief-stricken husband who cannot lay the past to rest?

Set between the icy streets and dark forests of Norway, The Katharina Code is a heart-stopping story of one man’s obsession with his coldest case.
Atmospheric, gripping and suspenseful; this is Nordic Noir at its very best.

‘Jørn Lier Horst is one of the most brilliantly understated crime novelists writing today’ Joan Smith ~ Sunday Times

‘Up there with the best of the Nordic crime writers’ Marcel Berlin ~ The Times

‘Horst, a former Norwegian police detective, is often compared to Sweden’s Henning Mankell for his moody, sweeping crime dramas’ ~ The New York Times

Read a full review of The Katharina Code by Jørn Lier Horst at Book Reviews to Ponder

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Dead Souls by Ian Rankin was the winner of the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 2005, six years after it was published in the U.K.

Detective Inspector John Rebus ties together the suicide of one of his colleagues, an investigation into a paedophile ring, the release of a convicted killer and the disappearance of a former girlfriend’s son in a literary slice of tartan noir.

Synopsis

Carry Oakes is a nasty character. Convicted in the U.S. of multiple charges of murder, the Americans have released him on a technicality after serving fifteen years of a life sentence and then deported him back to his home town of Edinburgh, where he has scores to settle.

Darren Rough, a known paedophile, is spotted taking photographs at Edinburgh Zoo. Shortly afterwards, somebody outs him to his local community, in a council estate of tower blocks that overlooks Arthurs Seat.

Jim Margolies is an up-and-coming police officer who inexplicably takes his own life by jumping from Sailsbury Crags on the city’s edge.

Damon Mee is the nineteen-year-old son of an old flame. He disappeared one evening whilst nightclubbing with his friends.

John Rebus is the police officer embroiled in the mess, some of it his own making.

Review

Ian Rankin’s Dead Souls is the 10th in the John Rebus series. The plot encompasses paedophilia, suicide and murder, and it is a dark read (not that any of the Rebus novels are uplifting).

The tale is a loose patchwork of four stories that thread together as Rebus chases the individual strands down. It is a messy and complex book which mirrors the reality of life. Whilst some elements are knotted off, others are not, leaving an untidy edge. This worked for me, I’ve yet to find a nice neat outcome in life, but some readers find the ambiguous conclusion frustrating.

There is a powerful underlying theme. Each subplot echoes the idea that our past moulds our future, and questions how much control we have over our destiny. The paedophile Darren Rough was abused in a care home as a child. How much of his adult behaviour is caused by that experience? Rankin echoes that question in each plot line, questioning how much of our future is predetermined.

Rankin pulls this off by drawing out his characters, from the pathetic Darren Rough to the vicious and manipulative Carry Oates, whose mind games will make your skin crawl. 

The message of the fax was clear and simple. It said Cary Oakes would kill again. 

The psychologist had warned the authorities of this. The psychologist said, Cary Oakes has little concept of right and wrong. There were lots of psychological terms applied to this. The word ‘psychopath’ wasn’t used much anymore by the experts, but reading between the lines and the jargon, Rebus knew that was what they were dealing with. Anti-social tendencies … deep-seated sense of betrayal …

Dead Souls by Ian Rankin

The book’s alarmingly clear depiction of the shadier side of Edinburgh life, from dingy council flats to bored bouncers and seedy nightclubs, provides the perfect backdrop to the story. (Rankin’s unnerving description of Edinburgh criminality is all the more disturbing given that he wrote most of the novel in a farmhouse in the sun-kissed Dordogne)

My only criticism of the book is Rebus himself. He drinks too much, breaks the rules, challenges authority, and is loved and loathed by his superiors. He also carries more than his fair share of Demons. That doesn’t make him a bad character, but the pencil portrait could just as easily be applied to Dave Robicheaux, Matthew Scudder or Bernie Gunther.

Rebus has now appeared in twenty-four books. Perhaps he is a little typecast.

Excerpt

The place suddenly became ridiculous to him, a chunk of prime Edinburgh real estate given over to the unreal … And then he saw the camera. 

Saw it because it replaced the face that should have been there. The man was standing on a grassy slope sixty-odd feet away, adjusting the focus on a sizeable telescopic lens. The mouth below the camera’s body was a thin line of concentration, rippling slightly as forefinger and thumb fine-tuned the apparatus. He wore a black denim jacket, creased chinos, and running shoes. He’d removed a faded blue baseball cap from his head. It dangled from a free finger as he took his pictures. His hair was thinning and brown, forehead wrinkled. Recognition came as soon as he lowered the camera. Rebus looked away, turning in the direction of the photographer’s subjects: children. Children leaning into the meerkat enclosure. All you could see were shoe-soles and legs, girls’ skirts and the smalls of backs where T-shirts and jerseys had ridden up.

Rebus knew the man. Context made it easier. Hadn’t seen him in probably four years but couldn’t forget eyes like that, the hunger shining on cheeks whose suffused redness highlighted old acne scars. The hair had been longer four years ago, curling over misshapen ears. Rebus sought for a name, at the same time reaching into his pocket for his radio. The photographer caught the movement, eyes turning to match Rebus’s gaze, which was already moving elsewhere. Recognition worked both ways. The lens came off and was stuffed into a shoulder-bag. A lens-cap was clipped over the aperture. And then the man was off, walking briskly downhill. Rebus yanked out his radio.

Dead Souls by Ian Rankin

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Dark Entries by Ian Rankin is currently his only graphic novel. The story revolves around DC Comics character John Constantine, a street-savvy exorcist and con man. It is a thinly veiled satire of the reality TV programmes Most Haunted and Big Brother.

“My son reads these things in a couple of hours but the ironic thing is that it took months to pull together… What you don’t appreciate before you’re doing it is that you’re effectively playing director of a film. For each frame, you are effectively pulling together a side of A4 containing detailed notes … There were something like 1,000 pictures. It took away months of my life” ~ Ian Rankin (The Independent)

Publisher’s Synopsis

Written by Ian Rankin, Art by Werther Dell’Edera Cover by Lee Bermejo.

Occult detective John Constantine has seen his share of strange things in his career, but nothing could prepare him for the horrors of…reality television. “Haunted Mansion” is currently the hottest show on tv, but when the macabre house actually starts attacking the contestants, Constantine is hired to be the ultimate mole.

Locked inside with a cast of wannabe-celebrities, his every move being monitored by a deadly figure from his past, Constantine must figure out who (or what) is pulling the strings before he gets cancelled―permanently.

DARK ENTRIES is a classic locked-room mystery starring HELLBLAZER’s John Constantine from Ian Rankin, the #1 international best-selling crime writer best known for his “Inspector Rebus” novels. Rankin has won numerous awards, including the Edgar Award in 2004 and is joined in this graphic novel by Italian artist Werther Dell’Edera, the illustrator of a number of American comics – mostly notably Vertigo’s LOVELESS.

Read a full review of Dark Entries by Ian Rankin at Bleeding Cool

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Witch Hunt by Jack Harvey is the thirst of three thrillers that Ian Rankin wrote under that pseudonym in the 1990s whilst struggling to make a living as an author.

Set before the arrival of the ubiquitous mobile phone, there is a femme fatale, nonstop action, death and violence and a host of details about guns and forensics to keep thriller buffs entertained. The ending was somewhat improbable, but then like so many good thrillers, the beginning was somewhat improbable as well.

As pulpy thrillers go, this is hard to beat, yet fans of John Rebus may not be so amused.

“Thrillers take a lot of time and research because thriller readers demand lots of detail.” ~ Ian Rankin

Publisher’s Synopsis

‘No one in Britain writes better crime novels today’ Evening Standard

Interpol have tried and failed to find the terrorist, Witch. Now the combined forces of Scotland Yard and MI5 must try the impossible to prevent a major international incident.

Dominic Elder carries her autograph wherever he goes. Witch is his passion, his obsession. And being retired is no bar to his willingness to restart the hunt. MI5 know that the man who wrote the Witch file is the key to catching their quarry. But the truth isn’t easy to spot. And it is only when an MI5 novice and his French counterpart piece together the smallest of clues, that Witch suddenly looks vulnerable…

Read a full review of Witch Hunt by Jack Harvey at Lioness at Large.

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The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin was a bestseller in Sweden and won the 2009 Glass Key award for the best Nordic Crime Novel. It was also awarded the 2010 CWA International Dagger after its translation into English.

The critics said it was “impossible to reduce … to a ghost story, a police procedural or a gothic tale”.

It captivated me.

Synopsis

Katrine and Joakim Westin sell their house in Stockholm and move with their young family to live the rural dream. They buy an old, run-down, reputedly haunted wooden manor house on the coast at Eel point on the Swedish holiday Island of Öland.

Winter has drawn in, and all the summer visitors have long since gone. They left behind them cold, barren, deserted villages where the holiday homes are easy prey for burglars.

A disaster befalls the Westin family when one of them falls into the sea, only meters from their new home and drowns. Distraught, Joakim confronts the reality that there was more to his escape to the country than he’d care to admit, and memories of the life he left in Stockholm start to haunt him.

Then on Christmas Eve, the darkest night of the year, a blizzard sets in and the manor at Eel Point receives unwelcome visitors.

Review

Originally published in Sweden as Nattfåk (roughly Night Blizzard), it is easy to understand why The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin won so many plaudits. It is eerily atmospheric, with a plot that plays out across genres, part police procedural and part gothic ghost story. All set on the desolate landscape of a Baltic island during the long Scandinavian winter nights.

The plot revolves around an ancient manor house. It was built initially for Swedish lighthouse keepers with timbers reclaimed from a shipwreck in the Baltic sea. The manor house has been beset with a series of tragedies. Its new inhabitants bring a tragedy of their own, reinforcing the sense that the house is somehow possessed.

Theorin overlays this gothic mood with a modern police procedural. It features a young policewoman determined to make her way and three young vandals who loot and burgle holiday homes.

The resulting novel is hard to buttonhole. It is neither a fairy tale nor a crime novel and will have you guessing right the way to the end if it will have a paranormal or earthly outcome.

The introduction to the book starts with a warning:

Isolated by the snow, Joakim is unaware that visitors – as unwelcome as they are terrifying – are making their way towards him.

For this is the darkest night of the year, the night when the living meet the dead …

At this point, you might be thinking of the start of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, but Theorin is far less cack-handed than that. The ghost story is very subtle; a little girl talks in her sleep, and the wooden house creaks in the wind.

Is it supernatural? You will have to read it and find out.

Excerpt

Torun doesn’t come back. At first I am angry with her, then I start to feel afraid. I have never seen so much snow whirling past the windows. The flakes are not falling, they are slicing through the air. The wind shakes the windowpanes.

Half an hour or so after the storm begins, a small figure finally appears, ploughing through the snowdrifts in the inner courtyard. I hurry outside, grab hold of Torun before she collapses and help her inside, to the fire.

The bag is still hanging over her shoulder, but the easel has been swept away in the storm. Her eyes are swollen shut; grains of ice mixed with sand have blown into them, and she can hardly see. When I take off her clothes they are soaked; she is frozen stiff.

She had been sitting painting on the far side of the peat bog, Offermossen, when the clouds gathered and the storm came. She tried to take a short cut through the tussocks of grass and the thin ice of the bog, but fell into the water and had to fight her way on to firmer ground. She whispers, ‘The dead came up out of the bog … lots of them, clawing at me, ripping and tearing … they were cold, so cold. They wanted my warmth.’

Torun is rambling. I get her to drink some hot tea and put her to bed.

The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin

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Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin is the first of the Öland quartet and won best first novel awards in both the UK and Sweden. The mother of a missing child receives his sandal through the post, but not until twenty years after he had disappeared into the fog.

Theorin intertwines two stories, the investigation into a child’s disappearance and the history of a badly damaged man. The landscape is memorably bleak and gloomy, and whilst the pace is slow, it is riveting. 

A thoughtful thriller, not a slasher.

Publisher’s Synopsis

‘An impressive debut novel’ The Times

‘Fantastic’ Guardian

Can you ever come to terms with a missing child? Julia Davidsson has not. Her five-year-old son disappeared twenty years previously on the Swedish island of Öland. No trace of him has ever been found.

Until his shoe arrives in the post. It has been sent to Julia’s father, a retired sea captain still living on the island. Soon he and Julia are piecing together fragments of the past: fragments that point inexorably to a local man called Nils Kant, known to delight in the pain of others. But Nils Kant died during the 1960s. So who is the stranger seen wandering across the fields as darkness falls?

It soon becomes clear that someone wants to stop Julia’s search for the truth. And that he’s much, much closer than she thinks . . .

Read a full review of Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin at She Reads Novels.

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The Asylum by Johan Theorin is set at the Dell preschool, part of St. Patricia’s Hospital, known as “St. Psycho’s” by the locals. It is a hospital for “antisocial men and women who have done what you might call bad things”. When Jan Hauger applies for a job as a classroom assistant, his ambitions aren’t entirely educational.

Theorin builds suspense as he jumps between the bright and cheerful nursery and the ominous psychiatric hospital to deliver a psychological thriller.

The ending is driven by one too many coincidences and is a little more than implausible, but the journey will put some industrial-strength knots in your stomach.

Publisher’s Synopsis

We don’t talk about sick or healthy people at St Patricia’s. Words such as hysteric, lunatic, and psychopath.… They are no longer used. Because who amongst us can say that we are always healthy?

An underground passage leads from the Dell nursery to Saint Patricia’s asylum. Only the children enter, leaving their minders behind. On the other side are their parents – some of the most dangerous psychopaths in the country.

Jan has just started working at the nursery. He is a loner with many secrets and one goal. He must get inside the asylum….

What is his connection with one of the inmates, a famous singer? What really happened when a boy in his care went missing nine years ago? Who can we trust when everyone has something to hide?

Read a full review of The Asylum by Johan Theorin at Shade Point.

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