THE SWEDISH SIX

Another Scandinavian half dozen that were acquired then buried....

Six from Sweden from Mari Jungstedt, Johan Theorin, Anders De La Motte, Peter Wahloo, Hakan Nesser and Hans Koppel

Peter Wahloo - The Lorry (1962)

I've read the first in the Martin Beck series and saw this one which is half of the double act on their own. It sounds quite interesting, but I've not read it yet.

From Per Wahloo - co-author with his wife, Maj Sjowall, of the internationally bestselling Martin Beck series of mysteries - comes a suspense novel about a former German soldier wanted for questioning about a murder in Spain.

Willi Mohr--former German soldier, starving artist, enigmatic drifter--is arrested by the police and subjected to a lengthy and perplexing interrogation. Unwillingly, he is drawn back to the previous year he spent in Spain, the mysterious death of a Norwegian couple he shared a house with and his tireless attempts to discover how they died. As the interrogation intensifies, Mohr realizes that his own secret activities have implicated him in a dangerous political situation. Exhausted, at the end of his money, worn down by the police, he takes decisive action that leads to a profound personal release.

Hans Koppel - She's Never Coming Back (2011)

Speculative punt - I quite liked the sound of it, but haven't cracked its spine.

Mike Zetterberg lives with his wife Ylva and their daughter in a house just outside Helsingborg. One evening, Ylva isn't home as expected after work. Mike passes it off as a drink with a work friend, but when she's still missing the next day, he starts to worry. As Mike battles suspicion from the police and his own despair, he is unaware that Ylva is still alive, just a stone's throw from his own home. Ylva has been drawn into a twisted plot of revenge and tragedy that leads back into her and her abductors' shared past...

Mari Jungstedt - Unspoken (2007)

Years ago (2011) I read something else by her which I liked - Unseen. Worth having a second look at her work IMO.

It is winter on Gotland, and fourteen-year-old Fanny is missing. She had no friends to speak of other than the horses she took care of at the local racing stable, and seems to have been an unhappy and isolated teenager, the daughter of an absent Jamaican musician and an instable Swedish mother. Is her disappearance somehow connected to the recent brutal murder of alcoholic photographer Henry Dahlström, who had won a large sum of money at the racetrack right before his death? Inspector Anders Knutas and his team investigate under pressure from the media. 

Fanny is finally found, strangled to death and left on a lonely heath, covered by moss and branches. At the same time, grainy but explicit photographs of the girl with a stranger are discovered, hidden in Dahlström's darkroom. Intrepid TV journalist Johan Berg, sent from Stockholm to cover the two deaths, pushes the investigation one decisive step ahead while still trying to resolve his relationship with Emma, which has been simmering since they first met during the investigation into a series of murders on Gotland this past summer. 

All evidence points to one of Fanny's coworkers at the stable, an American who has left the country for a short vacation. As Knutas and his team wait for his return to make the arrest, the inspector takes a well-deserved weekend off with an old friend, and at the lonely cottage in the woods, the pieces finally fit together. But this time, Knutas has gotten too close. . . .

Anders De La Motte - Game (2012)

My wife read and enjoyed this without feeling an overwhelming urge to get to the next in the trilogy. Hopefully it doesn't have a cliffhanger ending, which will probably piss me off if it does. I can't help but think of Keith Lemon and Celebrity Juice whenever I see this author's name.


"A taut thriller that will leave the reader excited for the next book in the series" (Kirkus Reviews) - the first novel in a groundbreaking international thriller trilogy about a deadly game that blurs the line between reality and fiction.

One Sunday morning after a long night of partying, Henrik "HP" Pettersson, a slacker with a lot of ego and very little impulse control, finds a cell phone of an unfamiliar make on a commuter train. Through insisting and slightly unnerving messages that refer to him by name, the phone invites him to play a game. HP accepts without hesitation.

The rules are that HP must complete tasks that range from childish pranks to criminal acts, as allocated by the mysterious Game Master. The Game starts out innocently enough and then becomes increasingly risky, threatening the safety of someone close to HP. He is determined to become a superstar, but when the dark and tragic secrets of his family's past are at stake, HP must make a choice. Will he suffer the humiliation of defeat, or will the need to win push him to the limit - no matter the cost?

The first novel in a fast-paced and riveting trilogy, Game will leave you guessing. Follow the rules, and everybody gets hurt...

Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room (2009)

Another author I know next to nothing about and who I have never read.

It is bitter mid-winter on the Swedish island of Oland, and Katrine and Joakim Westin have moved with their children to the boarded-up manor house at Eel Point. But their remote idyll is soon shattered when Katrine is found drowned off the rocks nearby. And the old house begins to exert a strange hold over him.

Hakan Nesser - The Mind's Eye (2008)

A few people whose views I respect rate this series. I bought a few and never got around to the. Pretty much the story of my reading life.,

The highly anticipated first novel in the Inspector Van Veeteren series in now available in English. At last, American readers will be able to enjoy, from its very beginnings, this addictive series by one of Europe's most beloved and best-selling crime writers.

Chief Inspector Van Veeteren knew that murder cases were never as open-and-shut as this one: Janek Mitter woke one morning with a brutal hangover and discovered his wife of three months lying facedown in the bathtub, dead. With only the flimsiest excuse as his defense, he is found guilty of a drunken crime of passion and imprisoned in a mental institution.

But Van Veeteren's suspicions about the identity of the killer are borne out when Mitter also becomes a murder victim. Now the chief inspector launches a full-scale investigation of the two slayings. But it may only be the unspoken secrets of the dead'"revealed in a mysterious letter that Mitter wrote shortly before his death'"that will finally allow Van Veeteren to unmask the killer and expose the shocking root of this sordid violence.