It's odd of me make a habit of reading about gruesome murders while picnicking peacefully by the river in Stratford. I attribute it to early imprinting: on one of my first few trips, the Bernardo/Homolka murder trials were much in the (heavily censored) news. I picked up a copy of Stephen William's compelling book on the murders, Invisible Darkness, a few years later and read it avidly. A pattern was set. So while I have never had a particular yen for Swedish crime novels (I'd never realized that was an actual subgenre, let alone a trendy one) I was open to the bookseller's recommendation that I should try one. He pulled out several, and I selected Mari Jungstedt's Unseen (2003; English translation 2005, St. Martin's Minotaur).
I'm not sure whether to classify Unseen as serial killer thriller, police procedural, or murder mystery; it's a little of all three. The novel is set on the Swedish island of Gotland, where preparations for the Midsummer holiday and the tourist season are in full swing. A woman and her jealous husband fight at a party. The next day, she and her dog are found brutally murdered. Was it her husband? The man she'd been flirting with at the party? Someone else entirely? Police Inspector Anders Knutas and television journalist Johan Berg approach the case from separate angles (and are frequently at cross-purposes) as further murders make it obvious that a serial killer is at work. Are the victims connected somehow or random? Jungstedt handles the plot deftly as the evidence convincingly points first one way, then another. The characters all have their nasty little secrets, and brief flashbacks to the killer's childhood up the tension without betraying his identity until the very end. I was quite impressed by how slickly the author set all this up; she kept me thrashing around in confusion along with her investigators right up to the big reveal and then kept the race to the final resolution short and suspenseful. Nice work!
The English translation (by Tiina Nunnally) is smooth. The author blurb says that this is her debut mystery in a series set on Gotland, and there have apparently been two more since (Unspoken and The Inner Circle
) featuring the same investigators, which I will definitely have to track down. In the meantime, if you enjoy the genre, I do recommend Unseen. If you'd like to try it:
Swedish crime novels (I'd never realized that was an actual subgenre, let alone a trendy one)
Whih reminds me that I have on my bookshelf, still unread, the book Berlin Noir, which contains three mystery novels set in Nazi Germany, and written by Scottish author Philip Kerr.
Posted by: Serge | August 21, 2008 at 03:21 PM
Last Sunday's Masterpiece Mystery! Inspector Lynley's Mysteries was a variation on the Bernardo/Homolka murders.
Posted by: Marilee J. Layman | August 21, 2008 at 06:15 PM
A couple of Law & Order episodes have also been based on the case. There was also a movie a couple of years ago. I have no particular desire to see it.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | August 22, 2008 at 07:37 PM