A book has arrived here at Crime Fiction Lover headquarters that looks like it could be the perfect gift for the Scandinavian crime fiction lover in your life. Barry Forshaw‘s Nordic Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Film & TV is just 160 pages long but will make you an expert in the subject overnight. It goes on sale 28 March.

Nearly half the book is devoted to the Swedish giants of the sub-genre – Steig Larsson, Henning Mankell and Sjöwall and Wahlöo, but you’ll also enjoy a chapter on the mighty Jo Nesbo and his Norwegian counterparts, a look at Finland and Iceland, and tour the darker side of Denmark. A recognised expert in the field, the author also pinpoints some names to watch for in the future, and presents his top top six Nordic noir films, top 20 novels and a further half dozen Scandi crime TV series.

If you love reading this type of crime fiction, we think you’ll appreciate straight away where Barry Forshaw is coming from. For example, he doesn’t dwell particularly much on David Fincher’s stylised big screen rendition of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Instead he talks about how the Danish director Niels Arden Oplev veered away from gratuitous shots and exploitative imagery when he plainly depicted the violence of the book in his version of the film. It’s this cool and practical approach, we think, that sets Scandinavian crime fiction apart – across print, film and TV.