Features

Interview: Kati Hiekkapelto

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Scandinavian crime fiction carries on booming, but the Finns are settled there just on the edge. As a people, lots of them don’t associate themselves with the rest of Scandinavia (though lots do). In terms of crime fiction, there haven’t really been any breakout superstars from…
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The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto

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Translated by David Hackston — There’s a new school of social critique creeping into crime fiction. When it’s done without sacrificing either characterisation or a good plot, it can make for very compelling reading. After Stav Sherez and Eva Dolan in the UK, Arnaldur Indridason and…
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Features

Interview: Arnaldur Indridason

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Arnaldur Indridason’s excellent novel Strange Shores concluded with his main detective, Erlendur, out in the mountains of Eastern Iceland contemplating his own death and that of his younger brother who was lost in a blizzard when they were children. Though the ending is ambiguous, it does…
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Book Club

The Drowned Boy

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Karin Fossum’s latest case for Inspector Sejer is the case of a little boy with Down’s Syndrome who has drowned, apparently, in a pond near his parents’ home. But forensics prove that he didn’t drown in the pond but elsewhere, while his mother swears it…
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Book Club

We Shall Inherit the Wind

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With a somewhat philosophical title, this is Gunnar Staalesen’s latest Varg Veum book to appear in English. As a private detective, Veum is unusual in Scandinavian crime fiction and here he’s hired by a woman to find her missing husband. He’s an executive in a…
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