PAASKEKRIM: Norway's Easter Crime Reading Wave!

I've posted about Paaskekrim before, but with the increased interest in Scandinavian crime,

especially the large number of Scandinavian authors available in English, I thought I would repost about Norway's Paaskekrim (Easter Crime)! It takes place Holy Thursday through Easter Monday and is a public holiday in Norway. It's a time when just about everyone in Norway reads crime novels. Bookstore displays are full of detective novels, television and radio stations run crime serials and newspapers publish special literary supplements.

This is a very peculiar national activity. Publishers in Norway actually time series of books known as "Easter-Thrillers"or Påskekrim, and dates of publication are moved to Spring and released at this time when the sale of mysteries goes up 50%. TV stations, radio and newspapers follow suit by running detective series based on the works of famous crime novelists such as Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Simenon and Ruth Rendell. Many of the Norwegian crime series are rerun.

 

Why does Norway choose Easter to delve into crime solving? According to one widely accepted theory, the tradition began in 1923 as the result of a marketing coup. Advertisements that resembled news items were published on the front pages of several newspapers, shocking readers who failed to grasp that it was a publicity stunt. This idea spread like wildfire among other publishing houses, and the crime novel became one of the few forms of entertainment available during the Easter break. Cafes, restaurants and movie theatres were closed during Easter, which was supposed to be a time of introspection and repentance. There was no radio, and of course no television either. But everyone could read, and so the Easter crime novel was born.

Some Norwegian Crime Writers

 

Jorgen Brekke 

Samuel Bjork

Camilla Bruce

Alex Dahl 

K.O. Dahl 

Thomas Enger 

Karin Fossum 

Vigdis Hjorth

Anne Holt 

Jorn Lier Horst 

Unni Lindell 

Jon Michelet 

Jo Nesbo 

Kjersti Sceen 

Gunnar Staalesen 

Agnes Ravatn 

Pernille Rygg 

Linn Ullman 

Great websites about Norwegian crime writers
Scandinavian Crime Fiction
Scandinavian Books
International Noir Fiction
Detectives without Borders
Euro Crime
 
There are 2 Scandinavian issues of Mystery Readers Journal 

Volume 30:4 (Winter 2014-15) Scandinavian Mysteries
Volume 23:3 (Fall 2007)  Scandinavian Mysteries
 

Hardcopy and PDF -- Reviews, articles and Author! Author! essays, many by and about Norwegian crime writers.

Subscribe to Mystery Readers Journal HERE.

And They Say Crime Doesn’t Pay? Guest Post by Stefán Máni

Stefán Máni: And they say crime doesn’t pay?

 
I have always been interested crime and criminals. Not merely interested but fascinated. Reading about crime pleased me. And yes, it was a guilty pleasure. Crimes and the criminals that committed them were like a magnet, like a black hole that sucked me towards the darkness that was hidden within. In the darkness were secrets, questions and sometimes answers. How did they do it? Why did they do it? Who are they? What drives them? How did they become what they are? Etc, etc …

I began to collect newspaper clippings from the age of six. Missing persons, accidents, terrorism … murder. I grew up in the 70s. There was a lot of terrorism going on then; IRA, Baader-Meinhof, and others. Iceland was quite peaceful at the time, and still is, especially compared to the continents on both sides of the Atlantic. But there were strange missing persons cases, drug smuggling and occasional bank robbery and murder. Even today, a murder is a big thing in Iceland. But it happens every year, usually more than once and more than twice. Living in a peaceful country makes you sensitive to violence and murder. A single act of violence can have a huge inpact on the whole community. When something bad happens, it’s non-stop on the news and in the papers. And that means a lot of newspaper clippings! 

I started writing at the age of 23, after losing my job in the fishing industry. The first ten years of my career as a writer I published five novels. The first four were mostly stories about loners and workers. I was a huge fan of Charles Bukowski (and still am) but I was not as funny as him – and not as wild, I guess. My fifth novel was to become my first best seller. When it was published, it was almost an overnight sensation. It was a crime novel based on my stack of newspaper clippings about two unsolved bank robberies. What I did was to absorb everything I could get my hands on about these robberies (I even interviewed criminals, inside and out of prison), and I didn’t stop until I had figured out how these crimes were planned and executed. In the book, I committed these crimes through made up persons, and got away with them – just like the unknown perpetrators had done. The book was called Black’s Game. In 2012 a movie came out, based on the book. Black’s Game, the movie, was a box office hit from day one. Last fall, celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the film, it returned  to the theaters and ran for three months straight. Now the plan is to make two more movies, a sequel and a prequel. 

The  success of Black’s Game opened my eyes. I had always been fascinated with crime. I was a crime buff. It was nothing to be ashamed off. My vocation was to write about crime! Since then, I have written many best sellers, all about crime, cops and criminals. I have also created the most popular character in Icelandic literature – detective Hordur Grímsson. The Grímsson Series is the number one crime series in Iceland, and has been from the start. Recently I published my first Grímsson Series titles in the USA. That was a big step for me and my career.

And they say crime doesn’t pay? 

***

 
Stefán Máni is the Dark prince of Nordic noir. He grew up in a small village on the cold and harsh Snaefellsnes-peninsula in West-Iceland. He was an avid book reader from an early age, but he didn’t think or believe he would or could become a writer myself one day. He dropped out of school at the age of 17, worked in the fishing industry, and travelled abroad whenever he had saved enough money. Driving around The States and going to concerts was his favorite thing to do. In 1991 he drank beer with Layne Staley and saw Nirvana live before they became the biggest thing on the planet. 

 

JENNY ROGNEBY: NEW QUEEN OF NORDIC CRIME

From pop artist in the group Cosmo4 to criminal investigator to author, Jenny Rogneby is the new Queen of Nordic Noir. Her latest mystery has already been swept up for movie rights by Le Grisbi Productions and DCM with John Lesher (Birdman, Fury, End of Watch) as the main producer. 

Thank you to Sue Trowbridge for translating Jenny's post from Swedish into English for Mystery Fanfare.

JENNY ROGNEBY:
“At the right time, in the right place, with the right equipment” 

I had never given any thought to becoming an author. I didn’t mind writing, I had actually enjoyed it, even if I hadn’t written anything other than my graduation thesis, or reports in my professional life, but I had never known that I had a talent for writing. Because how do you know that you have talent if you have never tested it?

Several of my author colleagues have wanted to become writers since they were children. There was no such thing in my world. I was born in Ethiopia and came to Sweden as an adopted child when I was only a year old. I grew up in a small village in northern Sweden. Both of my white, Swedish parents worked for the army. For my dad, discipline was very important. If I came home one minute late for dinner, I got a scolding. He’d point to the clock and say, “Jenny, you should be on time, in the right place, with the right equipment.”

The winters were cold and there were often huge amounts of snow. For us children, winter sports were what counted, and I often went skiing and ice skating. I wanted to be an ice princess when I grew up. I had seen the beautiful figure skaters on TV performing elaborate pirouettes on the ice, and I practiced on the river outside my childhood home, which froze to thick ice every winter. There was just one problem: it was so cold. I was always freezing. Mom used to hold my brown fingers between her fair-skinned hands and warm me if she had come along, but finally it just didn't work, I was simply too cold. My parents put me in a ballet school for children instead. It was indoors, and suited me better. I was only four years old, but my interest in dance was awakened, and I decided I wanted to become a performer. After elementary school, I applied to train as a dancer in another city, and was accepted. I moved away from home when I was 15, and then to the capital city of Stockholm when I was 18 because I had been admitted to the Ballet Academy. At this time, I had started to sing as well, and eventually chose to move on to a vocational track for musical theater. I worked as a singer and dancer for many years after that. I released an album in Sweden and in Japan for the big record label JVC. I played for my largest audience as the opening act for Michael Jackson in Tallinn, Estonia, in front of a crowd of nearly 80,000 people.

I still had never thought of writing books. However, I had begun to open my eyes to the society around me. After all, I had moved from a small village to the capital, and there I began to see more clearly people whose lives had gone awry. The homeless, addicts and criminals on the streets. I started thinking about this. I was born in Ethiopia, one of the world's poorest countries, and I grew up in Sweden, one of the richest countries in the world, and yet there were people who did not have a home, and who ended up with lives of addiction and crime. I wanted to learn more about it, and I began studying at Stockholm University. I studied topics like sociology, psychology, social work, law and criminology, and trained as a criminologist. I worked for many years as a criminal investigator at the Police Authority in Stockholm City, and this is when I began approaching the life of an author.

At the police authority I investigated many different crimes, including robbery, abuse, kidnapping, rape, and murder. The job included interrogating witnesses, plaintiffs and suspects, as well as gathering evidence in preliminary investigations. My job as an investigator gave me many ideas and inspiration for stories. One day, a very odd character appeared in my head. A female police officer who violates the norms of how a woman, mother, and police are expected to behave. She can no longer cope with her predictable, stressed-out, everyday life with a husband, child, and job, and when she decides to change her life, she ends up on a very dangerous, criminal path. She begins to live a double life. During the days she investigates crimes; in the evenings and at night, she commits them.

My ideas about the character Leona Lindberg did not want to let go, and finally I realized that I had to write them down. I decided to try to write a book, and to really take it seriously. I took leave of absence from my job at the police for one year. During that time I was unemployed, I had no income, and I sold my apartment in Stockholm to make it work economically. So nothing would distract me, I moved abroad, to Malta, a small, beautiful island in the middle of the Mediterranean, where the climate is much milder than it is in Sweden. There, in the sun, I walked on the boardwalk by the sea, and thought about my story and my characters.

One year later, I had returned with my first manuscript. I had been told that it was almost impossible to get a book published, especially in my genre; the publishers get a lot of crime novels, and in Sweden, there are already many world-renowned crime writers. I didn't let that stop me, though I have to admit that I thought my chances were small. If I was lucky, maybe a small publisher would be interested. The publishing industry was completely unknown to me. I had no agent, didn't even know what they did, and I had no contacts with publishers. But I had my knowledge of crime, police work, and the justice system, and my manuscript with an odd character that I believed in. I submitted it to several publishers simultaneously to boost my chances, and then I kept my fingers crossed for good luck.

The publishers' websites stated that they needed three months to read submitted manuscripts, so I was hoping for answers sometime that summer. After just one week, however, a publisher called me and wanted to set up a meeting. That same afternoon, I heard from another publisher who was also interested. And so it went, until ten different publishers had gotten in touch with me. Everyone thought that my manuscript was something new, fresh, with a different kind of strong female main character who brought something new to the genre.

Suddenly, I was sitting in meetings with publishers, and I was able to select which one I wanted to publish my book. I chose one of Sweden's largest publishers, and the book has now become a series that has been published in 14 countries. The movie rights have been sold to Hollywood.

I could never have dreamed that I would one day become a full-time writer. I have just started writing the fifth book in the series about police officer Leona Lindberg, and I feel like I have probably succeeded with what my father told me: to be “at the right time, in the right place, with the right equipment.”

More about me and my books:
www.instagram.com/jennyrogneby/
www.facebook.com/jenny.rogneby/

***
In the highly anticipated sequel to the internationally bestselling Swedish thriller, Leona: The Die is Cast, Detective Leona Lindberg, still reeling from her last earth shattering case, is back on the job. In ANY MEANS NECESSARY (Other Press paperback original; February 12, 2019; $16.99; ISBN: 978-1590518847 ), Leona, a completely corrupt detective who plays by her own rules, is in above her head with financial issues, but when a high stakes terrorism case like the one at hand arises, she is mysteriously asked to interview the suicide bomber who amazingly survived his own explosion. Why Leona, when this terrorism case should clearly be air marked for Sweden’s Security Service? 

Move Over Nordic Noir. Here Comes the Sun: Guest post by Michael Stanley

Michael Stanley:
Move Over Nordic Noir. Here Comes the Sun

Two years ago, we—a couple of crime writers who set our tales in Africa—went to the Icelandic Noir conference in Reykjavik. We arrived as fans of the subgenre known as Nordic Noir. And so we remain. But something happened at that gathering that got our goats.

It wasn’t the Scandinavian authors so much who miffed us, but rather the editors, the translators, the critics, and the garden-variety book pundits who kept differentiating Scandinavian Noir from “ordinary crime fiction.” The message was clear to those of us who write crime in sunny climes: Nordic Noir writing was special. What we wrote was ordinary.

What?

The first time we heard that distinction so stated, we rolled our eyes. But when the same words were repeated as panels came and went, that “what?” turned to “WHAT?” We vowed to throw down the gauntlet. To challenge the notion that only one variety of setting made for superior crime novels.

Within a few months, support came from Iceland in the person of our dear friend Yrsa Sigurdardottir, author of brilliant (despite the gloomy settings) Scandinavian mysteries and thrillers. In blurbing Michael Stanley’s forthcoming book, she wrote, ‘Under the African sun, Michael Stanley’s Detective Kubu investigates crimes as dark as the darkest of Nordic Noir. Call it Sunshine Noir, if you will – a must read.’ And there it was—the brand name for our challenge to the worldwide, years-long tsunami of Nordic Noir fiction.

The best way to launch the new trend, we thought, was to show off a panoply of locations. Fortunately, unlike Nordic gloom, sunshine is not localized on our globe. To this end, we have collected new, original short stories from seventeen wonderful writers from around the world, who set their stories in hot, sunny places. Sunshine Noir very well might be the most diverse array of stories in the history of crime anthologies. The voices, the settings, and the plots of the collection take readers to deserts in both hemispheres, beachfronts and ports along the equator, tropical islands, and interior jungles. Historic Istanbul and Mombasa figure into the mix, as does steamy Singapore. There are even a couple of Scandinavian villains to make a tongue-in-cheek point.

For all the fun and friendly competition that we hope to unleash with the Sunshine Noir challenge, we think it addresses a real issue. The field of crime fiction is crowded with many, many worthy authors. A few superstars, whose books go directly to the bestseller lists, are extremely well known and widely read. At the same time, there are also scores of mid-list writers whose work is excellent, admired by their fellow authors, and praised by critics, but whose existence is not well known, even to avid readers of the genre.

In times past, independent bookstore owners and clerks took a keen interest in discovering new fiction voices. Knowing their customers, they would recommend the little known writers. With thousands of such possible champions around the country, a less-than-famous author had a chance of building a readership. Not so anymore, now that so many Indie bookstores have gone out of business. At the same time, publishers—squeezed for profits—have abandoned efforts to publicize their mid-list books, leaving it to authors to make the effort. Nowadays, short of a film deal that actually results in a hit movie (the odds are about that same as being hit by lightening), all but already famous authors must rely on personal appearances and whatever mix of social media noise they can manage, to make themselves known.

Recently, the craze for Nordic Noir made this self-promotion easier for authors entering that sub-genre. With a built-in interest in all crimes Scandinavian, with critics and bloggers covering the field, and fans following the fad, many new authors easily found buyers for their work. We applaud this.

However, we find the rationale for the craze doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. When asked why Scandinavian crime writing stands out, pundits give a couple of reasons: They say “The settings of the stories enhance their effect because they intensify the psychological depth of the protagonists.” That is certainly true of some Nordic crime novels, but not all. And these qualities are certainly not exclusive to stories from the gloomy northern climes. Or they say “The landscape becomes a character in the story.” This is true of almost all vivid mysteries and thrillers, regardless of where they are set.

So, in the hopes of starting a trend of our own, we offer an intriguing alternative to the unrelenting gloom of those northern settings where real crime rates are low because it’s too cold to go outside, and it’s difficult to pull a trigger with gloved hands. Rather we want to remind readers that the shadows are darkest where the sun is brightest—places where tempers are short and crime flourishes.

Noir film and crime fiction were born in sunny California. Those early examples find their legitimate descendants in the stories in Sunshine Noir. Characters caught in dark doings in hot, sun-filled places. Thrillers in Yemen, the Sahara, Ethiopia, Puerto Rico. Murder mysteries in Botswana, Guadeloupe, Arizona, Singapore, Nigeria, Ghana, New Orleans, Istanbul.

Sunshine Noir proves the point made by Tim Hallinan in his Preface to the anthology: “The bright, warm, lush world is a greenhouse for evil.” 

Move Over Nordic Noir! The following HOT writers are gunning for you:

Leye Adenle, Annamaria Alfieri, Colin Cotterill, Susan Froetschel, Jason Goodwin, Paul Hardisty, Greg Herren, Tamar Myers, Barbara Nadel, Richie Narvaez, Kwei Quartey, Jeffrey Siger, Michael Stanley, Nick Sweet, Timothy Williams, Robert Wilson, and Ovidia Yu.  Edited by Annamaria Alfieri and Michael Stanley