Who's the best living Nordic crime writer?

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by HarryT

See post #22 above.

Ooops - and duh ! also .....

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by K. Molen

Voted for Henning Mankell.

His Wallander series is fantastic, and the BBC films are very good too. I enjoy that they're set in Sweden, with Swedish-language props and background audio, but that the actors speak English. I think of it like the universal translator from Star Trek: Kenneth Branagh and colleagues are technically speaking Swedish, but my ears hear it in English.

But back to the Wallander books. So far I've read six of the 10 Wallander novels, and have never been let down. My favourite is probably Sidetracked, but I also really enjoyed The Troubled Man. Although it should be noted that The Troubled Man is the last in the series, and one should probably wait and read that one last. I didn't and kind of regret it.

Thanks for the recommendation. I love Kenneth Branagh and this series sounds great, so I just downloaded the first season of the BBC series via iTunes.

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by Synamon

Thanks for the recommendation. I love Kenneth Branagh and this series sounds great, so I just downloaded the first season of the BBC series via iTunes.

The originals, (two different actors cast throughout the span) sub-titled, are much better/truer to the books IMO (never used that before, how exciting!).

And the Nordic wave now rolling/already rolled in on BBC4 are also top notch - The Killing 1 & 2, another on the way(not the US version, in the original) Jorgen, The Bridge, both I believe reprising also, with other writers in the pipeline.
I find them so refreshing, the story is all important, well written and constructed, and the characters meld in.
The foreign language thing is no barrier at all once you get in the swing.

Kind of Brechtian, I suppose !

[Kumabjorn]

Glad to see that gloomy Nordic entertainment can be appreciated outside our cold shores. To be honest, a reason that Hollywood style entertainment doesn't sell as well as it used to in the Nordic countries is that the escapist tendencies often go too far and when the lack of realism becomes in-your-face obvious (I'm not talking super hero movies here) a lot of us are starting to tune out.

[Billi]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Glad to see that gloomy Nordic entertainment can be appreciated outside our cold shores.

Only a little bit southward it is very much appreciated. Here are many fans of Nordic crime stories.

[Kumabjorn]

Especially Mankell have a huge following in Germany I believe. During the summer I know that Ystad arranges Wallander walks conducted in German.

[tilia]

Two of my favourite living Norwegian crime writers are Gunnar Staalesen and Fredrik Skagen.

I have a closer relationship to Staalesens books, probably because I like his detective so much (a loner, recovering alcoholic, former social worker, tends to get beaten up at least once every book). They are full of dry wit. Noir, I guess.

Skagen is also an excellent writer. Most of his books are set in the same universe, some of them tell the story of a money forger trying to get rich with different scams/dealing with the fall-out from his actions. Not a very good description, but I am having a problem describing him better. Anti-hero, but you also kind of want him to succeed.

There are several movies made of the Varg Veum-books (Staalesen). I don’t like them very much. The movies are so far removed from the books that for some only the title is left. They be may better for those how haven’t read the books.

I think some of the books are translated to English, probably more to German.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Especially Mankell have a huge following in Germany I believe. During the summer I know that Ystad arranges Wallander walks conducted in German.

A number of cities do walks based on their fictional residents. You can do an "Inspector Morse" walking tour in Oxford, for example.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A number of cities do walks based on their fictional residents. You can do an "Inspector Morse" walking tour in Oxford, for example.

Likewise, you can do a "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" walk and tram ride in Savannah, GA!

[Synamon]

Seven of Karin Fossum's books are being offered as the US Kindle Daily Deal for $1.99 if anyone wants to try those out. Only one of those is available in Canada (The Water's Edge), which made my choice simple.

[sabina125]

Theorin, Mankell and Nesbo are my favourites, but there are some new names popping up, such as Tegenfalk (Anger Mode) and Nilsson-Julien (the ice cage) showing great promise and looking at these I believe there are yet some contenders to come. Genre fiction is about twisting expectations, not reproducing exactly the same, because that’s the death of a genre. At the moment Nesbo and Theorin may have reinvented Mankell, but there are already others challenging them…

[usuallee]

After enjoying Steig Larsson's books, I've delved into Scandinavian crime quite a bit. The two best authors for my money are Jo Nesbo and Arnaldur Indridasson. Both are consistenly very good, and books like Indridasson's Silence of the Grave and Nesbo's The Devil's Star are nearly great.

Henning Mankell's books are alright, but they are soooo dryly written (even by Scandinavian crime standards).

[Kumabjorn]

This isn't crime, but if you have the opportunity to read Jonas Jonasson, don't miss it. I don't know if it has been translated but "The 100 Year Old Man Who Stepped Out of the Window and Disappeared" (Hundraåringen som gick ut genom fönstret och försvann) is a wonderful crazy story about a 100 year old man who doesn't want his 100th celebration. It is very very funny and strangely realistic in all its absurdity.

[stop__dreaming]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

This isn't crime, but if you have the opportunity to read Jonas Jonasson, don't miss it. I don't know if it has been translated but "The 100 Year Old Man Who Stepped Out of the Window and Disappeared" (Hundraåringen som gick ut genom fönstret och försvann) is a wonderful crazy story about a 100 year old man who doesn't want his 100th celebration. It is very very funny and strangely realistic in all its absurdity.

Not crime, no, but this is on my 'To Read' list actually.

[shanghaichica]

Jo Nesbo.