Murder and Madness, Swedish Style

Crime fiction master Henning Mankell starts and ends Before The Frost (BTF) with some serious and largely American tragedies: the Jim Jones/Jonestown affair and 9/11, but the story largely takes place in Sweden. A familiar friend to fans of international crime fiction, police inspector Kurt Wallander, is joined in this novel by his daughter, Linda, who recently graduated from the police academy. Linda is in a sort of suspended-animation, living with her Dad and waiting for the budget to be freed up so she can start work as a police officer. Linda will work out of the same police station in Skane as her Dad, and this book has a lot to say about father-daughter relationships- one theme involves Linda's long-time friend Anna and Anna's father, who abandoned the family 24 years earlier.

One pleasure of the book is a re-acquaintance with officer Stefan Lindman, whom I first met in The Return of the Dancing Master. However, the story itself is sobering. Though murder and disappearance occur throughout, they are also accompanied by cults, religious fanatics, infanticide, lies, and issues of how well we really know anyone.

The book is complex, but not needlessly so. Some events are not linked to the main thread in the way one might expect, and Linda shows her innate intelligence, as well as her inexperience, while pursuing various clues and crimes before she officially puts on the police uniform. Linda jumps into the fray because her friend Anna disappears shortly after mentioning a glimpse of her long-absent father in a nearby town. This is a claim that Linda has trouble believing.

Linda accompanies her own father to several crime scenes and to interview witnesses, initially more by coincidence than design. Linda's involvement increases out of necessity as the crimes begin to escalate, Anna's disappearance grows more troubling, and even more people disappear. Linda also travels around Sweden and to Denmark in search of answers about her missing friend, putting herself at risk and being assaulted several times. Linda is afraid now and then, but she has the determination of her father, and fights through encounters with thugs, steel hunting traps, and Christian terrorists (and no, they aren't a fictional construct outside of Northern Ireland).

During the story, we learn about Linda's troubled teenage years, two suicide attempts (one of which was very serious), her struggles with both parents (before and after their divorce), her failed relationships with boyfriends, and her decision to change careers and join the police. In spite of these difficulties, Linda grows closer to her father in many ways as they pursue the case.

There are no easy answers for the Skane police force or its Baker Street Irregular, Linda, on this case. The contributions of many, including colleagues who don't like each other, help at various stages, and Kurt orchestrates the team with his usual, gruff skill. Ultimately, however, the story and final triumph are Linda's, even if the victory is partly hollow because of the story's casualties.

I've read a lot of Mankell's books now, including Faceless Killers, The Fifth Woman, The Dogs of Riga, The White Lioness and more. The books can be very violent at times, but Mankell never exploits the violence by overdoing things, he only introduces violence that is integral to the stories. These novels maintain a very high quality and never rehash the same territory. In his books, Mankell doesn't shy away from moralizing about intolerance, greed, selfishness, neglect, fanaticism, racism, fascism and more, but he usually has a pretty light touch with the moralizing. Kurt Wallander himself is refreshingly non-judgmental, though he meets a realistic cross-section of people from all sides of the moral universe in his police work.

Read BTF to find out who survives unscathed, who "makes it" but bears lasting scars, and who doesn't make it at all out of the tangled web.

Lost comments recovered as text (reverse chronological order):

• James Bashkin

Peter, I agree. The last two I've read mainly deal with crime in rural or small-town Sweden, yet they manage to incorporate WW2, contemporary fascism, Jonestown, 9/11, Christian terrorists, international Christian cults, and even more. The remarkable thing is it doesn't seem forced at all. Best wishes, Jim

• Peter

I haven't read Mankell's last few novels, but in the earlier books, I was always impressed by his ability to combine narration on international and local scales.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

• James Bashkin

Thanks so much, Chhaya! Yes, definitely friends. I'll reply in blogcatalog, too.

• Chhaya

even tough i write mostly romance, i NEVER read it. i love reading the criminal/thriller type! so glad to have found u... friends?

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Murder in Scotland, Spain, Portugal, West Africa and Berlin

We have to add key books and people to the discussion right away, so I'm publishing without all the links that should be added (I'll edit them in later):

1. Ian Rankin, whose Inspector Rebus novels like Fleshmarket Alley (Fleshmarket Close in Britain) are truly excellent. I can't say the same about the Jack Harvey novel Blood Hunt- I found it to be pedestrian. But, nobody is perfect, and we should be thankful that Rebus is on the prowl in Scotland. I also know too much about the chemical and agricultural issues that formed the foundation of the crimes in Blood Hunt to find their treatment very satisfying in the book. But, hey, this just shows the danger of too much learnin'. Read it and enjoy! Perhaps enjoyment, or at least suspension of disbelief, will be easier if your aren't an industry insider.
   
   
2. The Blind Man of Seville, A Small Death in Lisbon, The Company of Strangers and The Vanished Hands represent one type of Robert Wilson's work, the intricately plotted, remarkably dark stories of murder, family, betrayal, pride, patriotism, spying, manipulation, secrets, weakness, love and pain. Pretty good territory for a rainy day, eh? These are works of literature,* though I wouldn't lend them to my kids. The Vanished Hands seemed to me a little weaker than the others, but it was married to political and social messages about repression in South America (by South Americans and the US) that needed to be published, so I give it some leeway. The first three I listed here are strong stuff, and are nothing short of brilliant. Rarely do I react as viscerally to the printed page, and rarely am I so engaged in the puzzle, as when I read this side of Wilson's writing.
   
   The other part of Wilson's work that I am aware of is the series of Bruce Medway novels, including The Big Killing, A Darkening Stain, Blood is Dirt, and Instruments of Darkness, all of which should be read. Soon. These books are less ambitious than the first set is some ways, and somewhat less satisfying, but still excellent. Although frequently violent and filled with betrayals and much sadness, there is a bit of optimism in these books, if seen through the boozy haze. The brotherhood of mankind has not completely broken down. Also, with the books being shorter, the characters are less fully developed (we don't know about three generations or more for each person's family, including all lateral genealogy, nor all GPS waypoints in everyone's lives for the past 85 years- just teasing a bit, here!), and the depths of depravity are somehow slightly less horrifying than in, say, The Blind Man of Seville.
   
   I'm not complaining about the characters at all: Medway and Co. form a terrific ensemble cast that sometimes stays a step ahead of crooks, sometimes a few steps behind, but mostly survives, to drink too much, another day. They ply their trade in West Africa, which is fully as foreign to me as any distant locale.
   
   Actually, it is a difficult to decide why the violence is less horrifying here, in Medway's world, than say in Inspector Falcón's world, because it really isn't. I hope the different affect is because somehow everything is less personal, life being painted with a broader brush in the Medway books, making events easier to accept and move on (to one's own life). However, it must be difficult to craft a great read in one third the number of words of the other books, so I'm not trying to be a jerk here, because they are great reads, and we should all know more about West Africa (at least where I live). It's not that I don't respect the Medway books in the morning, it's that I don't think about them as much in the morning, or find myself haunted as much by them at night, as I do with Seville, Lisbon, et al. "Bruce Medway"
   
   I strongly recommend reading each subset of Wilson's books in the order of their publication, given that aspects of character development can carry over from one story to another. I believe that the books are written by the same person, but the two have really nothing in common. That both sets of novels are very successful is impressive.
   
   
   *Did I just break a Nick Hornby rule? Or am I about to? See here. "Nick Hornby"
   
   
3. Philip Kerr is a cypher to me, or perhaps not, maybe I grok his fullness. What I can say is that he has written some of the best murder mysteries ever (see Berlin Noir), but he seemed to "go commercial" a while back and I don't connect too well with him any more in a consistent manner, though I don't deny the man his right to make a living. So where do I draw the line and why? I guess on another day."Philip Kerr"
   
   
   Question: is Philip Kerr coming back into the fold?

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