When the Author Builds Herself a World: Nicola Griffith, SHE IS HERE

Last July I mentioned Nicola Griffith, whose lush noir crime fiction can be a slow-read delight. At that point, her Aud Torvingen trilogy, featuring a Norwegian-born detective, was just being reissued, and is now easy to grab for American readers: The Blue Place; Stay; and Always.

Griffith is better known for her award-winning world-building in science fiction/speculative fiction. But she teases that you may not have heard of her books (especially if you're not reading sci-fi), but you've heard of the authors who praise herhis sleuthing series: Dennis Lehane, Val McDermid, Dorothy Allison, Lee Child, Manda Scott, Francis Spufford, Laurie King, Ivy Pochoda, Robert Crais, Elizabeth Hand, James Sallis and more.

So when the independent PM Press focused on Griffith in its "Outspoken Authors" series this winter, I set everything else aside to read SHE IS HERE, a slim compendium of Griffith's nonfiction, poetry, and short stories. It's not the most polished work I've picked up, but it's definitely compelling. 

As an example, in a "letter" to Hild, who ran an early Anglo-Saxon (Early Medieval) abbey and is better known as St. Hilda (protagonist of the award-winning novel Hild, pictured above), Griffith tells this historical personage brought to life that "On some level, you made me."

Of all the women remembered by history -- even sketchily -- you're the onlyu one I know of who lived on her own terms. Your renown was not as anyone's parent or wife, or for suffering unspeakable torment or a martyr's death. All you achieved was a person ion your own right. You lived a long and successful life and died admired and powerful. You won.

You won. That single fact, that women can win, helped counterbalance all the nonsense I'd absorbed from history. Partly because I stood on those ruins and saw what you had made, I knew we could each triumph on our own terms and in our own service.

When you notice that Griffiths describes herself on her website as a "queer cripple with a PhD," her self-discovery through Hild rings even more powerfully. And as a fictional world-builder, she clearly walks in company with such powerful writers as Margaret Atwood and J.R.R. Tolkein.

Give yourself a treat, a stretch, a vivid entry into the mind of an outstanding author. Grab a copy of SHE IS HERE. When you've finished reading it, maybe give it to the local library, for all the folks who otherwise might not notice an invitation into this potent adventure. 

 

 

Crime Fiction from Nicola Griffith, June's Nebula Grand Master

 Nicola Griffith at center, with her award.

The Nebula Award is for science fiction, not mystery -- but author Nicola Griffith has been able to excel in both genres, so it's a thrill to see her named Grand Master by the sci-fi world this summer. Her acceptance speech is well worth reading, as she talks about "world building" ... something that's also common to crime fiction and historical fiction, not just speculative or sci fi work.

Summer's a great season for discovering a new author and barreling through a series. Thanks to Picador, Griffith's three crime novels featuring Aug Torvingen are newly released in softcover in the US: THE BLUE PLACE (which I just devoured), STAY, and ALWAYS. Check out a long description of Aud (Norwegian born, American by choice, a former police detective now taking specialized private work. In THE BLUE PLACE she agrees to track down a case of art fraud, murder, and a red herring of drugs connected to a Mexican cartel. Why? 

"It's the adrenaline," Aud admits to her new and very close friend Julia. "When everything slows down and my muscles are hot and strong and the blood beats in my veins like champagne I feel this vast delight. Everything is beautiful and precious, and so clear. Light gets this bluish tinge and I feel like a hummingbird among elephants, untouchable."

But that elation and "untouchable" sensation can lead her astray, and does, with nearly unbearable costs. Maybe you'll connect to that part of Aud. Or maybe to the gorgeous descriptive passages of her adopted home area, Atlanta, Georgia, or the home she revisits as a safety location during the crime hunt, Norway, with its mystical winters, stunning landscape, and pervasive legends.

My dad used to say, "Do as I say, not as I do." Let me pass that along to you also: Take Griffith's Aud Torvingen crime novels slowly and luxuriously. Don't devour ... instead, savor. That's what summer was made for.

And here's a postscript from Griffith, to remind you that you may not have heard of her books (especially if you're not reading sci-fi), but you've heard of the authors who praise this sleuthing series: Dennis Lehane, Val McDermid, Dorothy Allison, Lee Child, Manda Scott, Francis Spufford, Laurie King, Ivy Pochoda, Robert Crais, Elizabeth Hand, James Sallis and more.

 

Nordic Noir in 13th Harry Hole Crime Novel from Jo Nesbø, KILLING MOON

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Nesbø never releases the heartstrings through an otherwise classic dark police procedural.”

 

Harry Hole, depressed Norwegian detective, has fled to California as the 13th book in this “Nordic noir” detective series opens. It takes one to know one, they say, and an aging actress and gambling addict named Lucille, hanging out in the bar with him, nails Harry as running as running away from something—his wife? No, she’s dead. “Ah. You’re running from grief,” Lucille readily assesses.

 

For Harry, that could be both the sum and his ending, since he’s ready to give up on everything. But (with plenty of Leonard Cohen lyrics along the way) it turns out that seeing Lucille assaulted because of her gambling debts wakes up the protective side of this aging police detective. And that, in turn, readies him to accept a return to Norway to solve a crime, provided he can get a big enough fee to pay off Lucille’s life.

 

It's a poignant and emotional way to pull Harry Hole back into action, and Nesbø never releases the heartstrings through an otherwise classic dark police procedural. DNA analysis, cocaine trafficking, violent crime—it all piles up across nearly 500 pages of detection. Alternating points of view bring in forensic sleuth Alexandra Sturdza, as well as a highly unpleasant set of manipulative criminals. Sturdza, despite her first gray hairs, is glad to recall once being told “her body was a cross between a tiger and a Lamborghini” and her wry comments and quirky expertise add fun to the narrative.

 

As detective novels go, this one is on the edge of being a thriller, since there’s a “ticking clock” for Harry Hole to discover and arrest a serial killer. Technically, he’s only got to prove his client didn’t do the crime, in order to have the needed funds wired to his bar buddy Lucille’s account and get her released. But of course, proving innocence is much more direct if someone else is clearly guilty. Because he’s on a short time leash, Hole takes bigger risks and cuts more legal corners than might be wise. It makes sense, in the context, and it ramps up the suspense.

 

Fans of the series will find this sleuth’s grief and loss powerful, and will appreciate how life forces Harry back into the work he does so well. Newcomers to Nesbø’s well-established investigations won’t struggle for context, though; Harry Hole’s sense of blame for his wife’s death and his overwhelming need to accept responsibility for another life are quickly established and push the plot.

 

At the core of Killing Moon is the painful reawakening of attachment in Harry’s life, through reconnecting with an old flame and her child. It’s a terrific contrast to the self-centered menace of criminals, and lets Nesbø dip into more classic tunes, beyond Leonard Cohen. The most satisfying lullaby Harry can offer to a child turns out to be “a low, slow chanting in a rough voice that now and then hit the notes of an old blues song about the perils of cocaine.” Truth seems to be the best currency with this child. For Harry, that in itself offers more risk and pain.

 

At the same time, it provides another hostage to keep Harry Hole investigating, as a new kidnapper invites Harry to check out the night’s moon: “You can see the eclipse is under way. When the moon is completely covered,” the villain offers, he’s going to slit the throat of someone Harry loves.

 

Running away from grief? Rephrase that: Once again, Harry Hole is running for the sake of love.

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Haunting Norwegian Historical Fiction, EYES OF THE RIGEL by Roy Jacobsen

It's sometimes said that the great literature offers two great themes: "A stranger comes to town" and "Someone leaves on a journey." In EYES OF THE RIGEL, Roy Jacobsen weaves together both of these, as new mother Ingrid Barrøy calmly announces she is leaving her island for a while—with her mysterious and calm dark-eyed baby.

It's soon clear that Ingrid is seeking the father of her child. How this little one came to arrive at the end of the long war, how much love is involved, and why her father's gone are mysteries from almost everyone. Perhaps Ingrid herself isn't sure how this journey has come to be. But she is determined to make it, without questioning whether she can complete it and find Alexander. 

Yet, aside from rowing away from the island and landing on Norway's mainland, she has little idea of where to go. That is, she doesn't actually know where to look for Alexander. So her initial impetus is seeking signs of his passing. For this, nearly speechless, she holds up the child, Kaja, whose dark gaze is unmistakably his. Others meeting the baby's gaze seem compelled to point to the faint trail ahead.

From this book of slow and evocative revelation, here are some key moments:

[p. 90] They made some food and ate it to the sound of snoring from the next room, in what Ingrid considered would have been an oppressive atmosphere, had they not had Kaja, who was sitting on the table between them and laughing at their playful fingers, she was so serenely marble-white and oblivious to both war and peace that Ingrid was able to reassure herself—once again—that the journey had not only been undertaken because of Kaja, it couldn't even have happened without her, without a child to lug around, this most divine of all burdens.

[p. 106] "You're walking along a road of bad consciences, my dear."

"Hva?" Ingrid said.

Hübner answered—as far as she could make out—that the Occupation of Norway had been of a special kind, in many places it had been more like co-operation, it had tainted people, now they were washing away the stains, the country is cleaning its hands. Yes, even many of those who did do something of value know that they could have done more, and they would prefer not to be reminded of it.

[p. 110] Ingrid ... realized she would have to resign herself to not understanding what she was doing, and not let it worry here, as if it were possible to think in a way which was unthinkable. Or stop feeling what she felt. What are you doing to me, little one, she thought, and pressed Kaja to her body.

The translation by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw evokes the languages of Scandinavia, but also of isolation and desperation. EYES OF THE RIGEL—the eyes are those of the child, and the Rigel was a ship that Alexander served on—offers the most elusive of mysteries, with delicate clues to their solution, and a finale as wide open as the ocean itself. Readers of mysteries by James Benn, Charles Todd, and Fuminori Nakamura may find much to enchant them in this slowly compelling adventure.

This is the third of a series that Biblioasis brought to America in translation; the previous volumes were The Unseen and White Shadow. When you order Jacobsen's work from a local bookstore, as them to check the Consortium list in the US, or the University of Toronto Press in Canada.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Heart-Wrenching Norwegian Sleuth Mystery, BIG SISTER (Varg Veum Series), by Gunnar Staalesen

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

Norwegian author GunnarStaalesen just entered his seventies, and his crime novels date back to when he was 22. Still, he’s not well known in the US because of the lag in translation. Fortunately, for his best-selling series featuring Bergen private investigator Varg Veum, that’s changing. BIG SISTER (originally published in 2016) is the sixth in this series that Don Bartlett has translated, with an easy-to-enjoy casual feel to the writing, and just enough “foreignness” on the tongue to appreciate the Scandinavian backdrop.

Big Sister is not a standard Nordic noir—Varg Veum’s darkest years are done, and he’s settled happily into a long-term relationship with stable lady friend, and a caring if somewhat distant one with his son. He’s not hitting the bottle or any other form of mind-numbing substance. But the opening of the book proves he still has secrets in his own past, or more precisely that of his family, to cope with:  The woman arriving at his office, Norma Johanne Bakkevik, introduces herself as the elderly half-sister he’s never met (she was adopted long before his birth), and wants to be his client in the disappearance of a college student.

Veum’s baffled by the presentation of the case: Nineteen-year-old Emma Hagland, a good student and quiet person, and Norma’s goddaughter, walked out of the apartment she shared with two other young women, and simply vanished. Nobody’s heard from her since. And the police, understandably, decline to take action, since college students are all too likely to move in with boyfriends, relocate due to quarrels, quit school and go on extended vacations, you name it.

Varg’s inclined to that opinion at first, too. But there are a lot of missing or damaged parents in this set-up, including young Emma’s estranged dad, who turns out to be part of a not very pleasant motorcycle club closer to Varg’s own locale. He can’t help noticing the pattern of upheaval and hurt as he investigates (he’s a PI with pretty good police connections).

Most disturbing of all is Veum’s visit to a woman named simply Veslemøy—no surname in use—who’s grown up well cared for in a mental institution and remains almost catatonic, and certainly speechless. This condition followed a long-ago sexual assault on Veslemøy—an assault blamed on the missing teen’s long-gone father, who still associates with a pair of brutal men from those years, leaders of the dangerous motorcycle club.

There’s no big payday likely for Veum in solving this case, if in fact Emma is truly missing. Even worse, the cold case around Veslemøy becomes an obsession for him. Somehow, he’s sure, Emma’s disappearance must connect to this profound disturbance in her family’s past. Veum considers the landscape around Emma herself to be distressingly vague:

I stared into space. I still didn’t have a distinct picture of Emma, but it was beginning to resemble a kind of profile, a bit blurred at the edges, but clear enough for me to see a vulnerable young woman, someone it might be easy to lead astray, someone who was open to approaches, whether well meant or malevolent, someone who could easily become a victim.

This worried me and created a sense of urgency. Perhaps I would have to resort to a few short-cuts, however brutal they might seem to outsiders—or to those concerned.

Veum’s short-cuts take him into confronting a brutality that threatens his life, repeatedly, but that’s not a new experience. Staalesen solves those moments with some “deus ex machina” moves that detract from the emotional power of Veum’s hunt for Emma and his dark plunge into the deadly side of social media. But this minor flaw doesn’t stop the force of the book, and the search for both Veum’s truth and Emma’s makes a fiercely good crime novel, with an unexpected but satisfying final twist.

Despite the Norwegian PI slant, BIG SISTER is far from the darkness of Henning Mankell or Karin Fossom. Consider it a traditional sleuth mystery, with plenty of nontraditional options added. Well worth reading, with the rest of Staalesen’s award-winning series.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.
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Brief Mention: Nordic Noir from Kjell Ola Dahl, FAITHLESS

The Oslo, Norway, sleuthing mysteries by Kjell Ola Dahl are well known in Scandinavia -- there are 11 so far -- but had to wait for translation, and for Orenda Books to start bringing them across the Atlantic. FAITHLESS arrived in the U.S. in September, and provides a rewarding new direction in dark Scandinavian mysteries: a police procedural with depth of character and a wickedly dry sense of humor.

Inspector Frank Frølich, attending an engagement party for an old friend, discovers the new fiancée is a woman Frank had just arrested, then released, under a Norwegian legal function that allows someone to pay a fine for possession of illicit drugs at a personal use level. But that complication, which after all can be managed within careful polite manners, pales beside the next twist: the women, Veronika, soon becomes a murder victim. Is it a result of the arrest or the party or something else entirely?

Frølich's own past turns out to have some of the clues, a decidedly uncomfortable situation for the Oslo detective and his partner, Inspector Gunnarstranda. But the twists of plot get even more intense when their fellow detective Lena manipulates one of their colleagues, as well as stepping over the line toward baiting a dangerous criminal.

The translation by Don Bartlett (British) is smooth and well carried out; the scenes are short and sharp; and although the crimes involved are dark ones, and the settings more than a little spooky ("atmospheric" is another descriptor), the characters carry a force of will that makes it a pleasure to follow their investigations. I'm glad Orenda's brought this award-winning Norwegian author to our attention; I'll be watching for more of Dahl's work.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Scandinavian Mystery, New from Vidar Sundstøl, THE DEVIL'S WEDDING RING

If you started your Scandinavian crime fiction with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series, Vidar Sundstøl's mystery novels, deep and layered and rich with character, may provide a very different approach to Norway's singular history and culture. The latest from this award-winning author -- winner of the prestigious Riverton Prize for the Best Norwegian Crime Novel -- feels at first like a traditional "retired police officer" investigation. Max Fjellanger's odd compulsion to attend the funeral of fellow police officer he hasn't seen in more than 30 years, takes him to Eidsborg, a village noted for its impressive "stave church." And now it's also the source of an enduring disquiet that haunts Max and may have resulted in three untimely deaths. That is, in murder.

But can Max prove the interrelationship of the deaths, spread as they are by time, profession, gender? What ties them together has something to do with the church and a family of local sheriffs. And most of all with a haunting carved "saint" or possible ancient idol that sits in the church and has links to the village's ancient pre-Christian past.

The layering of such diverse forms of mystery -- those of vindictive or punitive death, possible suicide, cheating lovers, mystic beliefs, and family traditions of danger and threat -- is key to Sundstøl's writing. Fortunately for American readers, the University of Minnesota opted to publish over the past few years his Minnesota Trilogy: The Land of Dreams; Only the Dead; The Ravens. The dark human evil present in those volumes brings the same shudders as the classic story "The Most Dangerous Game" -- crossed with the suspense of Edgar Allen Poe. In fact, the middle volume Only the Dead may be the strongest and darkest full-length novel ever of hunting gone mad, and I plan to re-read all three books periodically, to recall how complex and probing a crime novel can become.

The press connection with the Sundstøl novels (with skilled translator Tiina Nunnally) is clear in the Minnesota Trilogy, which links crimes in that wild American landscape and its earliest inhabitants, with the lives of Norwegians who arrived as settlers, prepared to displace Native peoples by force as needed, forging their own connection with the Minnesota landscape.

It's less obvious how THE DEVIL'S WEDDING RING fits the press, except that clearly there is a heartfelt connection between Minnesota and Norway -- and Sundstøl sweeps sideways into that relationship through Max Fjellanger, whose confused defeat as a young law enforcement officer in Eidsborg led to his emigration from Scandinavia, to the United States. The bittersweet pain of a loving but childless marriage there and the death of his beloved wife carries Max into an impulsive trip to his "birth country" where the losses of his adult life began.

The book's title refers to a space in the wildest segment of the hillside adjoining Eidsborg's famous and ancient church, a space where it is claimed that "the devil" once dropped his wedding ring -- causing nothing to be able to grow again where the ring had landed.

In the community life as Max explores it, however, that location in the woods may have something to do with sustaining a dark and mystic practice that has more to do with primitive roots than with community as Max finds it today. University librarian Tirill Vesterli, eager to put her dream of becoming a detective in motion, soon links up with Max while supporting his research, with Max quickly realizing he has a valued new colleague in his risky investigation:

Possibly a little eccentric, but definitely compos mentis. And clearly sharp-witted.

"Do you have any idea what you might be getting involved in?" he asked.

She nodded eagerly.

"Then why are you doing this?"

"Because the truth is out there, even though we can't see it."

Max Fjellanger leaned back and took a sip of his white wine. That was the right answer. The truth had always been his lodestar -- the thought that it was out there somewhere, no matter how difficult it might be to see. Precisely as Tirill had just said.

Max hears the story of the devil's wedding ring from a local criminal named Tellev Sustuglu, who claims he heard the tale himself in prison -- a tale that emphasizes that the past is not necessarily dead, and neither are some of the dark personalities who have shaped the criminal events that once took place, even a generation earlier. Or more.

Sustuglu wraps up his tale by saying, "And they say a place like that still exists in the woods above the Homme farm. I've never seen it personally but ... So maybe you'll understand now why I won't say anything against [former sheriff[ Jørgen Homme in public, even though he's been dead for years. That man was from another world."

Max's confusion over this statement of "facts of the case" grows more intense -- as does the risk of his life, and Tirill Vesterli's.

Sundstøl spins a well-wrought, intelligent, and intense modern mystery with archaic roots, and much to offer about the roots of crime itself. THE DEVIL'S WEDDING RING gets a place on my "hold for reading again soon" shelf, with the books that enchant me because they also teach me about writing, about a really good story, and about how to comb out the complexities of the human spirit.

(And thank goodness for the University of Minnesota Press!)

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Very, Very Dark: HELL FIRE, from Karin Fossum

HELL FIRE is the 12th in Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer series, and it's grim, violent, and graphic. That said, it's also insightful and precise in its language and imagery, and I'm always willing to read another by Fossum ... but also always depressed afterward. There are no happy endings in this series.

The frame is a double story of single parenting in Norway. One is the daily struggle of caregiver Bonnie Hayden, whose heart breaks a little bit each time she has to leave her crying five-year-old at day care. The other is Mass Malthe, raising a boy with obvious "issues" around food, cruelty, and power. In a relentless double spiral, Fossum entwines the two sets of lives. Those who read crime fiction regularly will have no doubt about who's done what, from very early in the book. What Fossum does though that keeps the book compelling and the pages turning is show the navigation of ordinary lives and the tiny changes of direction that eventually create a horrifying collision.

In that sense, this is a literary novel rather than a genre page-turner. I'd hesitate to hand it to anyone who's not already a Fossum fan, though; it's darker than night, with few guiding stars, and even the kindly and wounded Inspector Sejer won't come out of this one with the same soul that he brought into it.

From HMH Books, with an August 30 release.

For other reviews, click here.

Nordic Noir: Gunnar Staalesen, WHERE ROSES NEVER DIE

What a great discovery! This is the first time I've read a crime novel by Norwegian Gunnar Staalesen, and I'm really late finding his work ... he's written more than 20 titles, most significantly his series featuring detective Varg Veum, which began back in 1977.

Veum is a classic disillusioned private investigator, and at the opening of WHERE ROSES NEVER DIE he's completing a three-year binge of alcohol and self-pity relating to the death of his (female) partner, which is never fully explained here (I will have to get some of the earlier books, to find out more). And he's not in the mood to take any case that might improve his self-esteem; he's been "working" at lower and lower levels, taking assignments that can be done drunk.

But the mother who walks into his office has a plea he finds hard to resist: Her three-year-old daughter's case, a kidnapping from almost 25 years ago, is about to hit the statute of limitations, and no perpetrator was ever found -- nor was the child. Little Mette is still the center of her mother's life, and Maja, the mom, wants the case properly solved at last. Why Veum, of all people, to solve it? Well, he had solved another unrelated case of a missing child from the 1970s. And as he begins to realize he's going to take the case, he confronts a very large hurdle: getting sober enough to do this.

The dark cover of the book actually kept me from reading it for a while, so I was relieved to discover that despite the image, WHERE ROSES NEVER DIE does not contain child abuse in any of the gruesome sexually perverse modes that are currently in vogue (I hope desperately that the real world contains less of such crime than the fictional one). Instead, it's in some ways a traditional PI investigation, with some intriguing twists. For one thing, the child and her family lived in a somewhat quirky five-family environmental project, one of those miniature communes created in an attempt to use land more wisely and kindly. For another, one of the adults who lived there at the time Mette was kidnapped (and killled? it seems likely) was just shot to death in a jewelry-store robbery. There's no obvious connection, but the death has shaken Mette's mother out of her own lethargy, into pressing Veum for answers.

Although the book's blurbs refer to sharp teeth, darkness, and brutality, I found instead that Staalesen's expert storytelling tested and tasted the forms of love and commitment, along with what can go wrong inside well-meaning families. I enjoyed it a lot -- and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who enjoys a moderately dark but very humane mystery. Not for kids, but a thoughtful book that probes what it is to be an adult in a close community, and the value of trust.

Oh, if you've been reading Scandinavian noir: This is not as dark as most, despite the cover. I'd compare it more to the British crime fiction of, say, Ruth Rendell, or Colin Dexter. Good stuff, from Orenda Books via Trafalgar Square Publishing (release date Sept. 1).

Vidar Sundstøl, THE RAVENS, "Minnesota Trilogy 3"

Some books don't belong in the summer reading pile. THE RAVENS, the satisfying concluding volume of Norwegian crime fiction author Vidar Sundstøl's "Minnesota Trilogy," is one of these. It's solid, nuanced, complex -- and heavy. But what could you expect, after the heft and intrigue of the two earlier volumes?

As a quick recap, The Land of Dreams took Lance Hansen, a U.S. Forest Service ranger who should never have been involved in investigating a crime of murder, to the dark side of suspicion and spiritual distress. Hansen's hope of amassing an impressive genealogy of his family takes a nosedive as he stumbles across possible evidence of a deadly crime in his family's past -- while struggling to make sense of a brutal killing in "his" forest terrain, along the North Shore of Lake Superior. More details here. Both Scandinavian roots and the tragic past of Native peoples along the lake are soon entwined, along with Hansen's desperation to sort out the threats he's finding and the way his life is crumbling.

The second volume, Only the Dead, is unique among modern crime fiction, as it dwells within a single hunting trip made into a nightmare while Hansen and his brother maneuver in a killer ice storm in the dense woods. It shouldn't be read alone, in my opinion -- which makes it a very good thing that the entire trilogy is now available.

With THE RAVENS, Sundstøl binds together the deadly threads and soul illnesses revealed in the earlier books. And if the end result is a bit less haunted, and a bit more of a traditional crime investigation, it still has shocking moments that make it clear why this unusual crime trilogy is published by the University of Minnesota Press. To resolve his crisis, and eventually untangle the crime, Hansen grapples with his personal hauntings by both Swamper Caribou (the long-dead Ojibwe victim) and the women in his life. To reach the truth, he puts himself and his possible future at risk, and confronts the secrets within his nearest family circle. He even seeks his former father-in-law's instruction:

"The important thing is to fast."

"But I won't be able to sleep if I'm hungry."

"Hungry?" Willy sounded annoyed. "Do you think this has anything to do with going to bed hungry? I'm talking about self-deprivation, Lance. Torture. You need to suffer until you have a vision ... you have to choose to do this. And make it part of your reality."

Don't get just one book (unless you want to start with just the first one; and when you finish it, I think you'll want the others). It's handy in some ways to have this be three volumes, but it's one massive and intense story, engaging, compelling, and lingering. I'll never enter the winter woods, or an ice storm, or a news story about a killing, in the same way again.

Hunting Season: Revealing the Threat in ONLY THE DEAD, Vidar Sunstøl

Maybe you have to live in a place like Vermont -- or Minnesota, or Wyoming, or even Oregon or Alaska, maybe Maine ... a few more -- to grasp the powerful mix of emotions and motives in play during hunting season. Because I live among hunters and the hunted, I found Vidar Sundstøl's newest translated title, ONLY THE DEAD, entirely compelling, engrossing, and so grimly effective that it silenced me for hours afterward (not counting sleep time). It may be the most powerful work of suspense I've ever read. And oddly, strangely, marvelously, it's published by the University of Minnesota Press.

This is the second volume of an intense and amazing trilogy that translator extraordinaire Tiina Nunnally and the press are making available to American readers, one per year. Last December I savored all of the first volume, The Land of Dreams. (Review here.) The "Minnesota Trilogy" is dark, lush Scandinavian mystery writing (by a celebrated Norwegian author) but set in Minnesota, where so many Scandinavians settled. U.S. Forest Service officer Lance Hansen's probing of his own Norwegian genealogy turned disturbing in the first book of the trilogy as he uncovered family ties to local Native Americans -- the tribal people of deep dreams, to which he'd thought only his ex-wife and their child (and of course his ex-wife's parents) were directly connected. Layering evidence from the past and present, Hansen then finds himself bound to a possible murder from the settlers' times, and simultaneously to frightening dishonesty among people he cares about in his community and family.

It's hard to say more without giving away too many of the sharp and necessary twists of The Land of Dreams here -- so I'll say it this way: In the second book, ONLY THE DEAD, Hansen enters a frightening dance of intent and secrets with his own brother, during an ice storm, during hunting season. The guns are real; so are the threats.

This volume is only 156 pages long -- far more slim than the first volume -- and I have to say it is as meticulously trimmed of unnecessary detail as a fine poem would be. Or a well-butchered and lean-muscled animal, captured for winter sustenance. There are few comparable books out there; maybe The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was one of them, or some of Alan Furst's painful and tender revelations of espionage in Eastern Europe. To compress the action and exalt the tension the way Sundstøl does here creates a haunted interlude in a very particular setting.

Here in Vermont, we do suffer an occasional "ice storm" -- a weather event when rain freezes as it lands, coating trees, houses, and roads with glistening and deadly ice. In ONLY THE DEAD, that menace is framed around firearms and mistrust and danger.

Highly recommended. Don't compare the price to the page count; compare it instead to the years this book will linger, and the way it will displace every other noir novel as it brings to life Cain and Abel, and reveals the presence of violence -- and how we can neglect to escape while we have a chance -- in our landscape and our minds.

And speaking of that landscape, actually, I take back what I said at the start. Having walked home in the dark on quite a few city streets ... the hunt will translate effectively from the Minnesota forests, to wherever you're living now.

Collecting "International"? Short Note

Vidar Sundstøl's newly translated crime novel The Land of Dreams is set in Minnesota, but its connections with Norway may persuade you to shelve it with the Scandinavians -- Sundstøl won the Riverton Prize for best Norwegian crime novel of the year with his first in this "Minnesota Trilogy." Review here: http://kingdombks.blogspot.com/2013/12/scandinavian-mystery-set-in-minnesota.html

Because I haven't seen other mysteries set in American Samoa -- and there are some significant Pacific islands crime novels coming out in 2014 -- I want to mention the "Jungle Beat" series by John Enright. I'm not reviewing them here because they are Amazon published, and Kingdom Books hasn't quite decided what to do about such books ... but I've given Enright's Pago Pago Tango some support with a short piece on the online retailer's review slot, and wanted to flag this for collectors.

More armchair travel with detectives coming soon.

Scandinavian Mystery Set in Minnesota -- Yes, Really!

When did university presses start publishing impressive Scandinavian authors? Or is it just the University of Minnesota Press that's doing it? Don't answer that -- just grab a copy of Vidar Sundstøl's newly translated crime novel THE LAND OF DREAMS. Detectives don't come much more interesting than Lance Hansen, U.S. Forest Service investigative officer who stumbles into his first murder case on the north shore of Lake Superior, within the bounds of national forestland.

Grandson of Norwegian immigrants with one French Canadian ancestor in the mix, Lance is a self-taught local historian and genealogist, and connects immediately with Norwegian detective Eirik Nyland, sent to the US to help track down the killer of the 20-year-old canoeing tourist whose naked body Lance has discovered. Even as he struggles to sort out why his own brother was near the murder scene and what role his divorced wife, an Ojibwe, is going to let him have in raising his young son, Lance finds himself digging into both the current crime and a long-ago disappearance that may also have been murder -- and somehow seems to connect to the present.

Make time for this one, as it's hard to put down. One caution: This is the first book (just released this fall in America but published in 2008 in Norway) of Sundstøl's "Minnesota Trilogy." Some significant threads won't resolve; there will be a wait for books two and three (which I hope are also being translated by the skilled award winner Tiina Nunnally; I could have sworn the book had been written in English from the start).

But THE LAND OF DREAMS has so many vivid moments, and invites such a bond with its characters, that I believe it will stay with me very nicely until the next volume of the trilogy arrives. Only the Dead is scheduled for fall 2014 release, and The Ravens for a year after that.

Here is one of my favorite passages from the book -- not related to the crime, but a great taste of why I want to read more by Sundstøl, who won the Riverton Prize for best Norwegian crime novel of the year. Lance has just collected the Norwegian detective from the airport and is driving through a storm, and the Norwegian's point of view is here:

Everything was so different from what he'd imagined. He'd expected to have an efficient introductory meeting with the well-oiled machinery of the FBI. Instead, he was sitting here in this old Jeep with Lance Hansen in one of the worst rainstorms he'd experienced.

A bluish, shimmering light filled the car, giving Lance's hands on the steering wheel a cadaverous appearance. Then the moment was shattered by what sounded like the boom of cannons in the surrounding darkness. Another flash of light, and this time he saw the actual lightning bolt, a trembling spear of energy that pierced the rain-pelted surface of the suddenly illuminated lake.

"Would you still call this just light entertainment?" asked Nyland.

At that instant lightning struck again, and an electrically lit interlaced pattern, like the map of a complex river delta, spread across the sky in front of them before collapsing with a deafening boom.

Nyland laughed. He heard Lance laughing too. He didn't know why; he just couldn't help it.

That may be the last "light" moment the two investigators experience -- but it sets the tone for their partnership, in terms of being willing to tackle a dangerous darkness, while clinging to the fragile threads of human love around them.