Fiction

Last edited Tue Oct 7, 2014, 07:57 PM - Edit history (1)

I dove into it at the beginning of last week, like a starving woman diving into a feast, and finished it in one go. But I couldn't bear to be done with it, so I immediately picked it up again and took my time with it, reading it in small bits this time, so I could savor each detail.

And I'm still feeling dazed and haunted and emotionally wrung out after the second reading. Both times through left me tearing up at the end. Only the swan song of Henning Mankell's Wallander comes even remotely close to the poignancy of this closing chapter of Erlendur's story.

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And now for something completely different...

The next book I have lined up is Norwegian by Night by a new author, Derek Milller. I think I came across it on GoodReads - at any rate, it sounded intriguing, and my library was able to get it right away. Not necessarily a mystery exactly, from what I read in the GoodReads reviews, but it sounds like it might be entertaining, and it's something to hold me over while I wait (and wait) for the new books by some of my longtime favorite Nordic Noir authors to get in.

As additional back up, I've also requested all 10 books of the Detective Inspector Martin Beck series - the wonderful and most excellent police procedurals written between 1965-1975 by Swedish authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, a pair of Marxists who are literally the godparents of Nordic Noir.

I've already read the entire series a few years ago, and I'm definitely looking forward to revisiting these books. They combine solid plots with subtle social and political analysis - what more can a political junkie and crime novel junkie ask for?