English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers discussion

For the month of January 2020 we have eleven books to choose from, they are:

1) Mourning in Malmö: The Seventh Inspector Anita Sundström Mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström Mysteries Book 7) by Torquil MacLeod to be published 3 January 2020. Sweden.

Shortly after Inspector Anita Sundström’s mother’s death, Anita is called to an apartment where an 80-year-old man with dementia has tried to kill his wife. The case sparks off a renewed interest in the death of her father, who was lost in the 1994 MS Estonia ferry disaster. It’s not long before she discovers that she’s stumbled into a tangled web of conspiracy theories surrounding the tragedy, and the unstable and violent dawn of a newly independent Estonia.

At the same time, Anita’s also involved in an investigation into the murder of a prominent member of Malmö’s Pakistani community. When she’s sidelined by her nemesis, Alice Zetterberg, she becomes more determined to discover the reasons behind her father’s fate. She soon finds herself entering very dangerous waters that sweep her to Tallin, Stockholm and Oxford in search of answers that will finally give her closure in the seventh of the best-selling series of Anita Sundström crime mysteries.

2) Poison Berry: A short story of poison and pollution in the Arctic by Christoffer Petersen to be published 7 January 2020. Greenland.

When a young girl dies shortly after eating mountain berries, Constable David Maratse must determine the cause before the local community takes the law into their own hands.

Poison Berry is the fourteenth in a series of novellas to feature Constable David Maratse in Greenland. Each novella is set during Maratse’s career as a police constable, and features aspects of Greenlandic culture, tradition, and not least the stunning natural environment.

3) Anger Is My Middle Name: A Memoir by Lisbeth Zornig Andersen to be published 7 January 2020. Denmark.

An empowering memoir of resilience and redemption, and the rage that helped a girl escape the darkness of a harrowing childhood.

Born to a violently dysfunctional home in working-class Denmark, Lisbeth Zornig Andersen and her three older brothers were bounced between foster care and state-run institutions, then back again to their chemically dependent mother and sadistic stepfather. For Lisbeth, it was a childhood without perimeters. It was blighted by poverty, sexual abuse, neglect, betrayal, and further victimization by the broken Danish social services system that forced Lisbeth to live where and how it saw fit. Coming of age with a myriad of fears and emotional disorders, Lisbeth had three things that would become driving forces in her life: she was extraordinarily bright, extremely willful, and exceptionally angry.

From hell to liberation, this is Lisbeth’s emotional and galvanizing memoir told in two voices: that of a young girl who was unwanted, challenged, and defiant, and that of a woman who channeled her rage into a positive force as a passionate advocate for children’s rights. Whatever darkness defines the past, it can be used to change the future. Lisbeth’s heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting journey is proof.

4) Northern Mail: A short story of drugs and deception in the Arctic by Christoffer Petersen to be published 14 January 2020. Greenland.

When three children find a small plane on the ice, Constable David Maratse must find out what they took from the aircraft before the owners arrive to claim it.

Northern Mail is the fifteenth in a series of novellas to feature Constable David Maratse in Greenland. Each novella is set during Maratse’s career as a police constable, and features aspects of Greenlandic culture, tradition, and not least the stunning natural environment.

5) Under Darkening Skies by Ray Kingfisher to be published 14 January 2020. Norway.

In the shadow of World War II, one young woman must make an unthinkable sacrifice for those she loves.

Norway, 1940. Nazis pour into Oslo, a shroud of dread looms over the city, and eighteen-year-old Ingrid Solberg fears the worst. Under German rule, harsh rationing and the exorbitant cost of medicine threaten the lives of many, including Ingrid’s mother. And when Ingrid meets a young SS officer, she’s forced to make a desperate choice.

Seventy years later, after the death of Ingrid in her adopted country of Canada, her son, Arnold, finds a disturbing letter in her belongings. Though mired in his own personal problems, Arnold puts his troubled life on hold and embarks on a journey to Oslo to understand his family’s history.

As Arnold confronts the past, he discovers dark secrets and the long-lasting repercussions of decisions his mother made long ago. But as disturbing as his discoveries are, he has come too far to shrink from the ugly truth now…

6) The Tenant by Katrine Engberg to be published 14 January 2020. Denmark.

An electrifying work of literary suspense from international bestselling author Katrine Engberg, this stunning debut introduces two police detectives struggling to solve a shocking murder and stop a killer hell-bent on revenge.

When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who’s a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist—and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she’s writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous.

But Esther’s role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit—or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women’s pasts to discover the identity of the brutal puppet-master pulling the strings in this electrifying literary thriller.

7) The Wild One by Nick Petrie to be published 14 January 2020. Iceland.

War veteran Peter Ash tracks a murderer and his criminal family through the most forbidding and stark landscape he has ever encountered, in the latest thriller from the national bestselling author of The Drifter.

Losing ground in his fight against post-traumatic claustrophobia, war veteran Peter Ash has no intention of getting on an airplane--until a grieving woman asks Peter to find her eight-year-old grandson. The woman's daughter has been murdered. Erik, the dead daughter's husband, is the sole suspect, and he has taken his young son and fled to Iceland for the protection of Erik's lawless family.

Finding the boy becomes more complicated when Peter is met at the airport by a man from the United States Embassy. For reasons both unknown and unofficial, it seems that Peter's own government doesn't want him in Iceland. The police give Peter two days of sightseeing in Reykjavik before he must report back for the first available seat home. . . and when they realize Peter isn't going home until he accomplishes his mission, they start hunting him, too.

From the northernmost European capital to a rustbound fishing vessel to a remote farm a stone's throw from the arctic, Peter must confront his growing PTSD and the most powerful Icelandic snowstorm in a generation to find a killer, save an eight-year-old boy, and keep himself out of an Icelandic prison--or a cold Icelandic grave.

8) Death Deserved by Thomas Enger to be published 15 January 2020. Norway.

Police officer Alexander Blix and celebrity blogger Emma Ramm join forces to track down a serial killer with a thirst for attention and high-profile murders, in the first episode of a gripping new Nordic Noir series…

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography, Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number ‘one’ has been pinned to the TV.

Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missing-persons investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of a hostage situation nineteen years earlier, when he killed the father of a five-year-old girl. Traces of Nordstrøm soon show up at different locations, but the appearance of the clues appear to be carefully calculated … evidence of a bigger picture that he’s just not seeing…

Blix and Ramm soon join forces, determined to find and stop a merciless killer with a flare for the dramatic, and thirst for attention.
Trouble is, he’s just got his first taste of it…

9) Die for Me by Jesper Stein to be published 16 January 2020. Denmark.

A serial rapist wreaks havoc in Copenhagen. The police investigation is hampered not only by the absence of evidence or clues to the attacker’s identity but also by the force’s own incompetence and prejudice.

A DNA sample links the attacks to the cold case that caused DI Axel Steen’s wife to leave him four years earlier. Steen becomes obsessed with solving the case, a desperate grasp at reconciliation, but his self-destructive behaviour only serves to alienate his wife further. His increasingly volatile behaviour also causes his former police partner, now his boss, to question his competence.

Axel Steen’s hunt for the rapist is a rollercoaster ride of agonising near-misses, heart-stopping breakthroughs and a desperate search for a perpetrator who will stop at nothing to outwit the police.

A raw and tense thriller as well as a forensic dissection of a police investigation gone wrong. As Axel Steen becomes more and more obsessed with the case, it becomes clear that men who hate women are found at every level of society.

10) The Circus by Jonas Karlsson to be published 28 January, 2020. Sweden.

A real-life vanishing act leaves one man looking for his missing friend in this Kafkaesque new novel from the author of The Room and The Invoice.

The gentle, off-beat narrator of The Circus is perfectly content with his quiet life. By day he works in a bakery, and by night he obsessively organizes and reorganizes his record collection: it’s all just the way he likes it. But when his childhood friend Magnus comes calling out of the blue, the contours of our narrator’s familiar world begin to shift. On a visit to the circus together, Magnus volunteers to participate in the magician’s disappearing act, and midway through the routine he vanishes. Is this part of the act? What’s happened to Magnus? (continued in next comment)

10) (continued) And who is it calling on the phone in the dead of night, breathing into the receiver, but never saying a word?

Smart, sharply unsettling, and with its sleight of hand exquisitely kept, The Circus is a funhouse mirror of a read—one that ingeniously reveals the way we see ourselves and the stories we tell.

11) When We Were Vikings by Andrew David MacDonald to be published 28 January, 2020. Scandinavia.

A heart-swelling debut for fans of The Silver Linings Playbook and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Sometimes life isn’t as simple as heroes and villains.

For Zelda, a twenty-one-year-old Viking enthusiast who lives with her older brother, Gert, life is best lived with some basic rules:

1. A smile means “thank you for doing something small that I liked.”
2. Fist bumps and dabs = respect.
3. Strange people are not appreciated in her home.
4. Tomatoes must go in the middle of the sandwich and not get the bread wet.
5. Sometimes the most important things don’t fit on lists.

But when Zelda finds out that Gert has resorted to some questionable—and dangerous—methods to make enough money to keep them afloat, Zelda decides to launch her own quest. Her mission: to be legendary. It isn’t long before Zelda finds herself in a battle that tests the reach of her heroism, her love for her brother, and the depth of her Viking strength.

When We Were Vikings is an uplifting debut about an unlikely heroine whose journey will leave you wanting to embark on a quest of your own, because after all...

We are all legends of our own making.

We will add books as they become known to us. Good reading.

Great list Ken. All the best 📚 to you in 2020!

We have another book by Christoffer Petersen called Siku: A short story of dogs and dirty tricks in the Arctic to be published 21 January, 2020. Greenland.

When a prized dog is killed on the eve of the school dog sledge race, Constable David Maratse must find the culprit before more lives are lost.

Siku is the sixteenth in a series of novellas to feature Constable David Maratse in Greenland. Each novella is set during Maratse’s career as a police constable, and features aspects of Greenlandic culture, tradition, and not least the stunning natural environment.