Kristina Ohlsson’s Unwanted, recently released in the U.S., is an excellent addition to the rapidly growing Scandanavian mystery field. (Scandinavian mysteries seem to the mystery genre a little like the British Invasion was to music many decades ago, and like that other “invasion,” they’re bringing a fresh development to the genre.) Ohlsson’s debut introduces investigative analyst Fredrika Bergman, a young woman with a sharp mind and a prickly personality who is struggling to prove herself to experienced, senior officers. The interplay among the detectives is entertaining, but the real hook in this book is the crime: a young child has disappeared from a crowded train as it pulls into Stockholm, in what should be plain view of dozens of people, yet no one has noticed anything amiss. As the team fails to find the child, Frederika is sure they are looking in the wrong direction, and she is proved right. Then the crime escalates.

While not quite as sure-handed as Mankell, Larsson, and Nesbo, Ohlsson nonetheless has written a gripping story with intriguing characters that will grab your attention and hang onto you until the last page. This is the first in a series that looks to be a treat.

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Ann Patchett and the Bel Canto Curse

by Pat on February 8, 2012

Ann Patchet’s latest novel, State of Wonder, is a terrific book, as was her previous novel, Run. But when I recommend either of these excellent books to friends and library customers, I find that each and every one says, “Oh, I loved Bel Canto. Is this like Bel Canto?” Of course, in some stylistic ways, in the way she turns a sentence or describes a character’s emotional reaction, you certainly know you are reading Ann Patchett. But no, it’s not Bel Canto. State of Wonder is its own story, a fascinating one that begins in a research laboratory in Minnesota and journeys to the Amazon and a mysterious tribe deep in the jungle whose women remain fertile into old age.

Dr. Marinah Singh, a 42-year-old scientist, is dispatched by the pharmaceutical company for which she works to investigate the reported death of a fellow researcher. The state of wonder begins from the moment she arrives in Brazil and journeys into an increasingly strange land, but also into unexplored parts of her own psyche and past. Singh locates the legendary Dr. Annick  Swenson, in her 70′s and carrying on her research in the village. Singh studied under Swenson in medical school and had a catastrophic experience there that changed the direction of Singh’s life; Swenson doesn’t seem to remember her. The oddities of Swenson’s character, the almost hallucinatory characteristics of the insects, the plants, the animals of this jungle environment create a dream-like quality that becomes nightmarish as Singh searches more deeply into the Swenson’s work and the life of the tribe.

But back to the Bel Canto curse: every time I describe State of Wonder to someone or recommend Run, another brilliant work, s/he immediately starts talking about Bel Canto. I begin to think Patchett should have saved Bel Canto until the end of her writing career. Bel Canto is, of course, an extraordinary novel, and I do understand why everyone who reads it remembers it and longs to repeat the delight of reading it. Still, Patchet’s later novels are each outstanding. Please read them both and stop hoping to re-read Bel Canto while you do! If by some strange chance you have not yet read Bel Canto, put that one on your list as well. 

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Johan Theorin’s The Darkest Room: great Swedish mystery

June 4, 2010

The Darkest Room is set on the island of Oland in Sweden, and the setting is half the delight of this intriguing mystery. Like many of the Scandinavian mysteries (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series being a notable exception), Theorin’s book downplays the action (although there is, all in all, quite a bit of [...]

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Let the Great World Spin from Colum McCann

May 18, 2010

Let the Great World Spin is a delight to read–the language, the imagery, the characters are all extraordinary. Beginning with a poetic recreation of Phillippe Pettit’s tightrope walk (or rather, dance) between the Twin Towers in 1974, McCann uses that human expression of daring and delight as the touchpoint of his story of equally dancing [...]

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Stuart MacBride’s Blind Eye–another great Scottish mystery

March 20, 2010

Another great Scottish mystery writer—I don’t know how I could have overlooked MacBride for so long. He has an ongoing series featuring Detective Sergeant Logan McRae and a memorable cast of fellow officers working in the city of Aberdeen, also known as the Granite City. This is a dark series with frustrated police trying to [...]

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Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza: Brazilian mysteries with style

January 10, 2010

The Silence of the Rain; December Heat; Southwesterly Wind; A Window in Copacabana; Pursuit Recommended by a friend who rarely leads me astray, this mystery series featuring Inspector Espinosa is a treat of spare but vivid writing set in the lush environs of Rio de Janeiro. Espinosa has a literary and philosophical bent befitting his [...]

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Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood: opinionated and beautiful

January 5, 2010

This dystopian novel focuses on characters who are part of God’s Gardeners, a progressive/rational/Green religious group that has separated itself from most aspects of mainstream society. Led by the Adams (Adam One, Adam Two and so on) and Eves, the group raises lush gardens on rooftops around an unnamed metropolis, tends bees, lives a vegetarian [...]

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The Girl Who Played with Fire: Smokin’ Read

October 26, 2009

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  was a favorite of mine last year (reveiwed here a few months ago).  A generous friend who read my review handed me a copy of The Girl Who Played with Fire soon after it was published. I devoured that one in a couple of sessions, and pondered again how [...]

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The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo: Sweden in the 1960′s

August 12, 2009

The Laughing Policeman is one of a series of police procedurals featuring Superintendant Martin Beck and Detective Lennert Kollberg as well as several other detectives. Written in the late 60′s and early 70′s by a husand and wife team, these are really wonderful slices of Swedish society, police work, and a darkly comic view of [...]

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Book List: Go, Dogs, Go!

July 18, 2009

Below are  fiction and non-fiction books with dog characters, training and care information, or other information about dogs.   All of them are available through the libraries of the CLEVNET Consortium — many are owned by the Cleveland Hts-University Hts. Public Library System. You can click on the title if you’d like to order the book through the CLEVNET [...]

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