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.

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.