Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel
My only disappointment was that there were no Kristine Kathryn Rusch stories in there -- I was hoping for an introduction to her writing as well.
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It's not as convenient as having an ebook, but she's got some
freebie short stories online, as listed on the Free Speculative Fiction Online website. And most weeks, she rotates a
weekly free short story on her blog on Monday, from all the genres she writes (also mysteries, and fantasy romances under pseudonyms), as well. The new story is up for the next week, if you're interested in reading it.
As for me, I managed to fail reading anything during National Read A Book Day on the 6th, and then Read an Ebook Day on the 16th, mostly because I finally discovered how to make that "Your application is damaged and cannot be opened." Mac error message that I'd gotten for a number of my Humble Bundle DRM-free games go away*, so that's been the new timesink.
But I did manage to finish all three of Norwegian author
Thomas Enger's Henning Juul novels out in English thus far, which I picked up on sale at Kobo for the equivalent of less than $2 CAD each, and quite liked. These novels are unusually written in the present tense, and star the eponymous intrepid crime reporter for a plucky online news site trying to compete with the established papers, returning to work after experiencing a personal trauma (the nature of which is initially unspecified, but slowly unfolded over the course of the 1st novel and apparently the rest of the series, which is planned to be 6 books long according to the original Norwegian publisher's website, as well) for which he was taking compassionate leave, and getting dumped into the deep end with a very changed work environment as well as the obligatory horrific crime for his homecoming story.
Enger has been on my wishlist for a while, ever since Barry Forshaw, I think it was, who wrote an academic book on the Nordic crime fiction phenomenon, mentioned that he had a sharp sense of humour in his writing. It turned out to not exactly be what I was expecting, but still enjoyable anyway in a deadpan fashion which contrasts a satirical depiction of the Norwegian media industry with the obligatory hard-boiled sort of damaged protagonist with stuff lurking in his past.
Maybe it's just me, but the bit where there's a typical office meeting where the staff is discussing their plans for upcoming website feature articles and how best to cater to the Gentle Readership was utterly hilarious: there's some tragic foreign news they could run, but Norwegians don't really care about sad things that happen to foreigners unless Norwegians are involved or affected in some way
; the most important parts of the news site are the celebrity gossip and sex advice sections, because that's what their hits stats say everybody reads avidly, even if they don't admit to it, and putting a poll up for people to share their opinions about their sex lives reliably brings in the traffic
; the very best stories feature some combination of Norwegians, celebrities, sex, and exotic foreign interests that involve Norwegians, and it is a frabjous day indeed when they can run an interview with an American minor talkshow celebrity of Norwegian immigrant descent who is visiting Oslo on a book signing tour to promote her brand-new sex advice guide
.
Enger himself is an award-winning journalist according to his Wikipedia entry, and the rest of the books are filled with that kind of not-sure-if-serious sort of observation about the news media in general, and the Norwegian news industry in particular, which gives the books a certain added cultural background sort of interest which I found rather entertaining. The 3rd novel has some sort of promo blurb circle on the cover which says that it's perfect for fans of
Borgen (the Danish TV drama, which coincidentally has a spin doctor named Kasper Juul; presumably no relation outside of fanfiction crossovers), and that one did indeed combine a depiction of politics and news coverage in a way that was entertaining and mildly insightful about the interaction of them both.
Aside from that, the actual story and casework are pretty good for what's a debut novel series from a regular non-fiction (one hopes!) writer. They are ambitiously complicated, usually featuring not just an A and a B crime case for Henning Juul to follow (which are sometimes somewhat related, but sometimes very tangential to each other), but also a C backstory where he's looking into the causes behind the traumatic event which caused him to have to take time off of work, the effects of which still run through his narrative and inform many of his personal decisions (and then sometimes even D and E and F story threads following developments with other characters related to the A, B, and C cases). This is probably mildly realistic in a way, as even despite Norway's statistically low violent crime rate which often makes Scandicrime stories kind of unrealistic†, there's probably a bunch of stuff going on at once and a reporter wouldn't be able to dedicate himself to a single case.
Despite all the stuff packed into them, the first novel initially unfolded rather slowly, gradually building up the character of Henning and the world surrounding him for quite a while before getting into beginning his coverage and eventual solving of the crime in a way that was an interesting change of pace from the way these things often dump their sleuth protagonists immediately into things. Mind you, it takes a more conventional sort of action thriller-y turn with dramatic culprit chases and mildly improbable last-minute saves, but the slow burn character work continuing throughout is a nice touch.
Medium recommend. I turned out to like these even more than I was expecting after they didn't initially meet my original expectations, but some parts of them do feel a little overstuffed plot-wise and not quite carrying it off, and the stylistic choice of present tense narration might put off some readers. Aside from that, the storylines are interesting, and cases and character work do build from book to book, as it turns out that something revealed as part of investigating one crime unlocks another path for Henning to follow, so you have to read them in order. But for the £0.99 a pop that
Burned,
Pierced, and
Scarred are currently going for from Faber in the UK (apparently #4 is slated to be out from new publisher Orenda next year, and eventually #5 as
Cursed and
Killed, respectively, following the single-word titling theme), it's certainly worth a try, especially if you think you might be interested in probably-less-exaggerated-than-I-think-they-are depictions and observations about Norwegian news media and its interaction with society.
* Apparently it happens with a number of otherwise perfectly cromulent unsigned developer applications which are resistant to the ctrl-click open anyway workaround, and you have to go into the System Preferences to temporarily turn off the security settings for long enough to launch the app the first time.
† Though as a result of Googling a case mentioned in the 1st novel (for which I have now seen the words "murder sock" used in a headline by a serious publication; one begins to understand how Enger got that impression of his own profession), I found an interesting
article in The Telegraph co-written by Norwegian "Queen of Crime" Anne Holt and British crime novelist Peter James about the respective art imitates life aspects of their countries.
Apparently stealth serial killers aren't really all that uncommon in the UK, sadly, while the sort of elaborate scheming plots so often depicted in Nordic Noir but which rarely occur in a land where the most common cause of violent death is drunken fight-stabbing actually do occur on occasion, and sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.