Scandinavian Crimes

My reading habits (technical or social stuff aside) are pretty lame, with an average I guess of 3 books per year. Moreover, I'm not into the classics or anything of the sorts, and in the last years almost all the literature that I've read has been Scandinavian crime novels (yeah, pretty trendy), and I have to say I really love this "literary school". I started off with Stieg Larsson (yes, I got totally hooked to the Millennium Trilogy, even when I find some failing points in it) and then went on to deeply enjoy with Asa Larsson and Camilla Läckberg.

These to Swedish ladies are really excellent writers. Their plots are pretty good, but what I like most of them (and that I think is the reason for having got so trapped by their novels) is the tortured characters and their outstanding emotional depictions. These novels are inhabited by tormented souls, people that apparently live a normal life, but that to a greater or lesser extend live surrounded by (their own) phantoms, haunted by remorse, tortured by some old bad decisions that have left a bitter taste in their mouths, a taste of failure and incompleteness. Sometimes the source of all this discomfort are large tragedies, but for other characters it's a concatenation of small inconveniences what makes up their personal landscape of desolation. A vast, wild (and snow covered, it could not be otherwise) landscape, overcast skies, deep lonely forests or small communities where the permanent gossip isolates those that consider themselves in the losers side... that's the another essential part of these novels.

In the last months I've read "The Hypnotist" (pretty good, I'm longing to get my hands on the film adaptation) and Jo Nesbo's "The Leopard". The Leopard is a delightful book, I liked it quite more than "The Snowman" that I read last year. The emotional component in this book is quite less present than in Asa Larsson or Camilla Läckberg (even when the main character, Harry Hole is a fucked up man lashed by addiction and guiltiness), but on the other side the plot is quite more complex and twisted, and will keep you glued to its pages since the first line.

Harry Hole makes some excellent reflections on the human nature (that he happens to be not too fond of) and among them, I'd took note of this paragraph:

That's how banal we are. We believe because we want to believe. In gods, because that dulls the fear of death. In love, because it enhances the notion of life.

Pondering on these books and authors a bit more, I think my winner is Asa Larsson, mainly due to the soft fantastic element that she adds to novels like "The Black Path" (my favourite) or "Until Thy Wrath be Past". This component is unique (I think) when compared to other authors and I would say is the cherry on top of a carefully cooked delicious cake.