English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers discussion

For the month of April 2021 we have 4 books from March and 5 books from April, they are:

1) Odin's Child by Siri Pettersen published 23rd March 2021. Norway.

An epic fantasy trilogy from Norway about thousand-year-old secrets, forbidden romance, and what happens to those who make a deal with the devil comes at last to the United States!

15-year-old Hirka has always been an outsider in the world of Ym: she’s the only person without a tail, and the only one unable to access the Might, a current of power that runs through the earth.

Her differences become more and more of a concern as the date approaches for the Rite—the ceremony where everyone is to be blessed by the all-knowing Seer and the Council of powerful families who rule in His name. With only a few weeks until the Rite, Hirka discovers the shocking secret behind why she is tailless and Mightless: she is not from this world. As an infant, she was brought through an ancient stone circle known as a Raven Ring, and as long as she’s in Ym, the passageway between worlds remains open inviting terrifying creatures called the blind to follow.

No one can know the truth of Hirka’s identity, especially
not Rime, her childhood friend who just might become something more. But is Rime is hiding secrets of his own?

The first in a trilogy, Odin's Child is a thrilling modern fantasy epic.

2) The Lost Village by Camilla Sten published 23rd March 2021. Sweden.

The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense.

Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened.

But there will be no turning back.

Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice:

They are not alone.

They’re looking for the truth…
But what if it finds them first?

3) My Friend Natalia by Laura Lindstedt published 23rd March 2021. Finland.

Award-winning author Laura Lindstedt makes her Anais Nin–like US debut with this mesmerizing tale of one woman’s potent affliction: Natalia cannot stop thinking about sex. Narrated by her unnamed, ungendered therapist, who leaps at the chance to employ their most experimental methods, My Friend Natalia offers a gripping examination of the power dynamics always present but rarely ever spoken about in therapy. “Something flared within me,” the therapist notes. “And it wasn’t exclusively sympathy.?.?.?.?It was more like a sudden experience of harmony, wholly inappropriate given the circumstances..


By combining philosophy and literature, repressed childhood memories and explicitly unrepressed erotic experiences, their sessions quickly shed all inhibitions. As tension percolates, the therapist can’t shake the question: What does Natalia really want? In prose charged with sharp banter and double entendres, My Friend Natalia takes a deconstructive approach to the self-help narratives of our times and announces Laura Lindstedt as a rare and unflinching literary talent.

4) The Banshee Palace by Christoffer Petersen published 31st March 2021. Greenland.

When a young woman is found alone in the mountains, Constable Petra Jensen uncovers evidence to suggest she is lucky to be alive. Encouraged by the commissioner, Petra investigates, following a dark path to a remote cabin known as the Banshee Palace.

The Banshee Palace is the seventh in a new series of Greenland Missing Persons novellas set in the harsh, unpredictable Arctic, rich in tradition, myth and culture.

‘Nail-biting tension from the first page to the last...’ – Isabella Muir

The Banshee Palace introduces many new and interesting characters, together with a few familiar faces making cameo appearances in the series.

The Greenland Missing Persons stories are set prior to The Ice Star and Seven Graves, One Winter.

5) White Shadow by Roy Jacobsen published 2nd April 2021. Norway.

The sequel to the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted The Unseen

No-one can be alone on an island . . .

But Ingrid is alone on Barrøy, the island that bears her name, while the war of her childhood has been replaced by a new more terrible war and Norway is under the Nazi boot.

When the bodies from a bombed troopship begin to wash up on the shore, Ingrid cannot know that one will be alive and warm enough to erase a lifetime of loneliness.

She cannot know what she will suffer in protecting her lover from the Germans and their Norwegian collaborators, nor the journey she will face, wrenched from her island once more, to return home.

Or that, amid the suffering of war, among refugees fleeing famine and scorched-earth retreats, she will be given a gift whose value is beyond measure.

6) October Child by Linda Boström Knausgård published on the 6th April 2021. Norway & Sweden.

- The book everyone has been waiting for! Linda Bostrom Knausgaard finally opens up about her struggle with mental illness and her marriage to Karl Ove Knausgaard. - In a piece entitled "At War - Why Revenge novels are taking off in Norway", published in The Guardian, the writer states: "Knausgaard followed My Struggle with the Seasonal Quartet, published in Norway between 2015 and 2016. Last month his second wife, Linda Bostr�m Knausgaard, herself a successful writer, published Oktoberbarn (October Child) in Sweden, her take on events depicted in Knausgaard's Spring and Summer. However, October Child does not negate her ex-husband's book - rather, their writing now appears to be in dialogue. Karl Ove writes in Summer that the couple agreed to separate; in Oktoberbarn, Linda claims that it was his decision. Her first openly autobiographical book therefore becomes an act of self-examination powerful enough to match if not surpass those of her ex-husband." - Openly autobiographical, this memoir chronicles the worst time in Linda's life, when her then husband had her admitted to a closed psychiatric ward against her will, and subjected electroconvulsive therapy. - Linda's memoir is a fierce break with contemporary psychiatry and scathingly critical of electroconvulsive therapy, which resulted in the loss of many of her memories. After publishing October Child in Sweden, she received many letters from patients suffering the same consequences. The memoir sparked a controversy in the psychiatric community in Sweden, and we can expect heated discussion in the US. - Linda is by far our most reviewed and especially most interviewed author. For the publication of Welcome to America, Linda was interviewed by Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, reviewed in a multitude of high-profile outlets, had a short story featured in The New Yorker and was longlisted for the Best Translated Books Award. Reluctantly famous through Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle, everyone wants her take on the story. So far, she has been intensely private, avoiding the topic in interviews - until now!

7) Becoming Leidah by Michelle Grierson published the 6th of April 2021. Norway.

A love story set in nineteenth-century Norway, about a woman rescued from the sea, the fisherman who marries her, their tiny and unusually gifted daughter, and the shapeshifter who follows their every move, perfect for fans of Alice Hoffman, Yangsze Choo, Eowyn Ivey, and Neil Gaiman.

The sky opens up... I hear them laugh.
They don’t feel the sadness in the air.
They don’t feel the danger coming, riding in on the wind.

In the hinterlands of old Norway, Leidah Pietersdatter is born blue-skinned, with webbed hands and feet. Upon every turn of season, her mother, Maeva, worries as her daughter’s peculiarities blossom—inside the root of the tiny child, a strange power is taking hold.

Maeva tries to hide the girl from the suspicious townsfolk of the austere village of Ørken, just as she conceals her own magical ancestry from her daughter. And Maeva’s adoring husband, Pieter, wants nothing more than for his new family to be accepted by all. But unlike Pieter, who is blinded by love, Maeva is aware that the villagers, who profess a rigid faith to the new God and claim to have abandoned the old ways, are watching for any sign of transgression—and are eager to pounce and punish.

Following both mother and daughter from the shadows and through time, an inquisitive shapeshifter waits for the Fates to spin their web, and for Maeva to finally reclaim who she once was. And as Maeva’s elusive past begins to beckon, she realizes that she must help her daughter navigate and control her own singular birthright if the child is to survive the human world.

But the protective love Pieter has for his family is threatening the secure life they have slowly built and increasingly becoming a tragic obstacle. Witnessing this, Maeva comes to a drastic conclusion: she must make Leidah promise to keep a secret from Pieter—a perilous one that may eventually free them all.

8) End of Spies by Alex Gerlis published the 8th of April 2021. Denmark.

Europe, 1945: no longer at war but not yet at peace. The gripping finale to the bestselling Richard Prince espionage thrillers.

British agent Richard Prince and the Danish spy Hanne Jakobsen come together for a vital mission: to find a Nazi war criminal responsible for the murder of fellow British agents.

The hunt takes them on a perilous journey through Europe, a continent living on its nerves in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. They unearth a secret Nazi escape line funded by British traitors – and it’s one which could lead them to Hitler’s trusted deputy, Martin Bormann.

But when the Americans become involved it is no longer certain who’s on which side. Help might come in unlikely places. Can justice be found against the odds… Or are they too late?

9) Everything Like Before: Stories by Kjell Askildsen published the 27th of April 2021.

Spare, taut and told with flashes of pitch-black humour, the short stories of Norwegian master Kjell Askildsen capture all the strangeness of modern existence. In this selection of tales, spanning the whole of his brilliant career, unnerving encounters occur, lonely individuals try to connect, families and relationships are fractured, and we are confronted by the fragility and absurdity of life.

10. As always we will add books as the become known to us in April. Good reading.

11) Silenced by Sólveig Pálsdóttir to be published 15th of April 2021. Iceland.

The darker the secret, the harder to bury it. Compelling reading - Lilja Sigurðardóttir


As a police team is called in to investigate a woman’s suicide at the Hólmsheiði prison outside Reykjavík, to detective Guðgeir Fransson it looks like a tragic but straightforward case.

It’s only afterwards that the pieces begin to fall into place and he takes a deeper interest in Kristín Kjarr’s troubled background, and why she had found herself in prison.

His search leads him to a series of brutal crimes committed twenty years before and the unexplained disappearance of the prime suspect, whose wealthy family closed ranks as every effort was made to keep skeletons securely hidden in closets – while the Reykjavík police struggle to deal with a spate of fresh attacks that bear all the hallmarks of a copycat.

Glass Key Award-nominated Icelandic author Sólveig Pálsdóttir is an exciting new voice in Nordic crime fiction.

This is probably pushing it because they only mention Sweden in passing. It's WWII in Sweden. Everything else seems to be in the UK.

Whitby Rock: The Sweetest Drug by Kev Freeman published on 17th April 2021. UK and Sweden.

As dawn breaks, a church bell calls for attention in a rural English village. An unidentified body hangs upside down in its belfry. Beneath, the swinging corpse are small, individually wrapped candies marked 'Whitby Rock.' It is not long before the case doubles its mystery. Detective Inspector Mary Hunter, a rising star in the police force, sets out to investigate the reason behind the murder and unravel the strands that connect it all together. In the middle of it all, Jack Headland, struggling to break free and put his working-class upbringing behind him, becomes entangled with an enigmatic criminal mastermind who tells a mysterious story of contraband, drugs, money laundering, disappearance, and robbery. A link that connects unplanned events in wartime Sweden to a strange hotel on the English coast, and the manufacture LSD.



The story wraps itself though time and geographic location, everyday events happen for no reason other than to become remarkable and connect to a thread of synchronicity. Enjoy a thrilling tale of mystery, murder, robbery and suspense that will engage you from start to finish.

Leif J. Tranemose's , who is Danish born, has written a book called Violent Stories From The South of Sweden: The Man From Veberöd published 8th April 2021. Sweden.

William Moberg was a mountain of a man who had a dark secret. He had a farm outside the village, a place not a lot of people has seen and lived to tell about. He grew his plants with care, using his personal secret as a soil. Young blonde women. Moberg was the worst serial killer the South of Sweden had seen in a lifetime but Göran Danielsson from the police in Lund was on his trail. But when his girlfriend gets involved things get complicated, is she an accomplish or is she a victim.
It all leads up to an explosive ending at Moberg's farm outside Veberöd

An explicit and graphic tale of murder, deception and adultery.

The Woman from Denmark by Christine Fraizer published 23rd April 2021. Denmark & U.S.A.
This is her first book.

Agnes Davenport wants nothing more than a crime to put her in the same league as pulp fiction star Detective Jack Parker. She meticulously follows Parker’s investigations and techniques as groundwork for her break into the world she is determined to enter as a female gumshoe.

A train stop in Salt Lake City, Utah, introduces Agnes to a murder victim she encounters in a desolate Methodist Episcopal Church, a murder committed at the church in 1895. That year the Rev. Francis Hermans and his wife had moved to Salt Lake City to sprout their religion in the Mormon-dominated enclave.

Agnes is not the only person interested in the old building and its past. Bootleggers find it a convenient way station leading up to prohibition, and so does the feisty entrepreneur Viola Templeton. Through a chance encounter between Agnes and Viola, a bond is formed, one that transcends their differing motives.

Unbeknownst to Hermans’ wife and his predominantly Scandinavian congregation, the reverend’s past belies his piously crafted appearance. His was a façade embellished by a religious forbearance that belied an all-consuming desire for women, money, and adulation at any cost.

The year is 1917, and together, Agnes and Viola hope to uncover the demons and mysteries the Rev. Hermans thought he had left behind over twenty years earlier.