Block 46 - Johana Gustawsson

 Johana Gustawsson is the Queen of French noir.   She was born in Marseilles, lived in London and now lives in Sweden.   This, the first in her series featuring Canadian profiler Emily Roy and London-based true crime writer Alexis Castells, who is Spanish, takes place in Sweden, London, and Germany, specifically in Buchenwald concentration camp in the closing years of World War II; everything else takes place in 2014, which I assume is when the book was written.

Alexis is drawn in when her friend, the jewellry designer Linnea Blix, fails to turn up for her launch party in London.   Her mutilated body is found in Sweden, an out-of-the-way town called Falkenberg.   Emily Roy is the profiler sent to assist the Swedish police.

Then a boy turns up murdered in London, with the same signature wounds.   Is it a copycat, a serial killer with broad tastes, or (as Emily suggests) a pair of killers operating together, one of them dominating the other?

Interweaved with the investigation narrative is the story of young Erich Hebner, a German student sent to Buchenwald as a political prisoner.   He has a measure of medical training and is recruited by the camp doctor, Horst Fleisher, with the gruesome experiments he carries out in Block 46.   After the war, Hebner drifts around Europe, ending up living in the same cul de sac in Falkenberg where Linnea Blix had her hideaway.   That's got to be more than a coincidence right?   I confess I didn't see the final twist coming.

The action moves along at a punchy pace.   The writing is neat, controlled where it needs to be, more expansive where it doesn't.   There's a lot of dialogue which all rings true.   The characterisation is what it needs to be with a series - that is to say, a lot remains to be discovered about Roy and Castells.   On the other hand we get plenty of insight into Erich and other characters involved in the main plot.

I enjoyed Block 46.   I already have the other two Roy/Castells novels on my Kindle and will read them soon.   I was interested in Johana Gustawsson because Thomas Enger collaborates on a series with her as well as Jorn Lier Horst on the Blix/Ramm series.   Wait a minute ...  Linnea Blix and Alexander Blix?   That's got to be more than a coincidence.   Right?

The Axe Woman - Hakan Nesser

 I have reviewed five of Nesser's Van Veeteren novels on this blog (another five to go).  The Axe Woman is one of his other string, the Barbarotti series.  I initially wondered if this was going to be set in an imaginary Italy, as Van Veeteren is set in a fictional Holland, but no, it's set in Sweden - Gunnar Barbarotti is a middleaged Swedish cop with an absent Italian father.  Obviously it's a fictional Swedish town, though.

Anyway, Barbarotti wakes up one morning to find his wife dead beside him, from a brain aneurysm.  They knew about the problem and learned to live with it, but nothing prepares Barbarotti for the overwhelming, shattering grief.  After a few weeks' compassionate leave, he is due to return to work.  His boss, Asunander, wonders if he's fit to take on major casework.  Probably not, so he gives Barbarotti a cold case to pursue.  A missing man called Arnold Morinder.  Actually it's not that much of a mystery.  Morinder was living with a woman called Ellen Bjarnebo when he disappeared - and Ellen is the Axe Woman of Little Burma who did ten years for murdering her abusive husband and chopping the body into little pieces.  Asunander would just like the case cleared up before he retires - or so he says.

Of course nothing is what it seems to be - and the case proves suitably therapeutic.  It's extremely well-written, the characters highly satisfactory and the plotting expertly handled.  It sends with Barbarotti deciding to go off in search of his father, which is a novel I would look forward to reading - if only The Axe Woman wasn't described as the fifth and final Inspector Barbarotti mystery.

Down for the Count - Martin Holmen

Harry Kvist never took a count in his boxing career but things have got pretty low since his retirement. He is fresh out of jail after serving eighteen months for intimidation. He misses his prison boyfriend, he needs money, he needs his old friends. But the old laundress in his street has died at the hands of her retarded son. She has left Harry a note, reminding him that he promised to look after the lad. And so Harry launches into an investigation which brings him into contract with the old woman's long estranged daughter, local property developers, the asylum where the boy is now imprisoned, the special school where he was educated, and the special police squad who look after the special needs of the Swedish king.

Every bit as good as Clinch (the first part of the Stockholm Trilogy and reviewed on this blog a couple of years ago), Down for the Count is full of compelling characters, brutal action and dark humour. I can't wait to get my hands on the third instalment, Slugger.

The Wolf and the Watchman - Niklas Natt och Dag

An extraordinary achievement, fully deserving all the hype it has received, The Wolf and the Watchman is certainly the historical novel of the year, possibly the best since The Name of the Rose, back in the Eighties.

The story itself is startlingly original. In Stockholm, in 1793, the one-armed watchman Mickel Cardell pulls a dead man from the water. I was originally going to say body but that is somewhat of an overstatement in the case of this man. His arms, legs, eyes, tongue and teeth have all been removed, in stages, before death. The under-pressure police chief summons his friend and sometime investigator Cecil Winge. Winge has solved potentially unsolvable cases before, and if he doesn't succeed this time, he has nothing to lose, given that he has already outlived expert estimates of death from consumption.

Cardell and Winge join forces, the former providing the physicality to the latter's brains. Of course they eventually find out the dead man's identity and who killed him, but not before the author has opened up the story in an amazingly bold way.

The story starts in Autumn 1793 but then goes backwards in time, first to the summer. This is the story of the teenaged surgeon's assistant Johan Kristofer Blix, who we are meant to assume is the mutilated victim. Blix falls foul of the wastrel elite and builds a substantial debt which is then sold on to a nobleman who carries Blix off to his remote castle. Blix ultimately escapes and becomes part of the next section which begins in the spring of 1793.

This is the story of Anna Stina, an even younger teenager who is taken into 'care' by the authorities when her mother dies. The house of correction is really a torture chamber. Girls are whipped to death for the amusement of their guards. Anna escapes and takes on the role of one of the girls who died, the daughter of an innkeeper. She is, however, already pregnant by the guard who helped her escape. It is then she meets Blix, who redeems his sins by doing her a favour. After Blix is lost Anna plans to change her appearance with acid. At this point the story catches up with itself and we are back on the edge of winter.

The story is incredibly dark. Stockholm is corrupt, debased, and stinks to high heaven. The author is himself a member of one of Sweden's oldest families, so we must assume he has access to all the insider knowledge.

Hard to believe, but The Wolf and the Watchman is a debut novel. And what a debut it is. Again, I can only compare it with the arrival in fiction of Umberto Eco.

Clinch - Martin Holmen

This is real winner, which I happened upon by signing up to the Pushkin Press newsletter.
Holmen brings something radically new to Nordic Noir - a period piece set in the early days of classic American Noir. Genius!

Harry Kvist is a down-at-heel former boxer in Stockholm 1932. His main source of income is repossessing bicycles from renters out of funds. The Great Depression in Stockholm is excruciatingly hard. The streets are full of tramps and madmen. Envious eyes are cast at the rise of Hitler's Nazis, who seem to herald a resurgence of the common man.

One December night Harry accepts an out-of-town commission to go and collect a debt from one Zetterburg. Harry strong-arms the guy and arranges to return the next day for the money. But Zetterburg is found dead in his flat and Harry, who is not entirely unknown to the city constabulary, is brought in for questioning. He was seen by a nosy neighbour leaving Zetterburg's building.

Fortunately, he has a potential alibi - a prostitute he passed the time with while waiting for Zetterburg to come home. He was also seen elsewhere in the city at key times, cruising the gay bars. Because Harry's not-so-secret secret is that he prefers rough sex with young men. Very rough.

Anyway, Harry is released and sets out to track down Sonja the bowlegged prostitute. Along the way he comes across a one-eyed Austrian who seems intent on killing him. Then he happens upon a former movie siren who also likes it a little rough.

The book is first-person, present tense, the only way to take your Noir. Holmen has a style all his own, which works brilliantly. He conjures up Stockholm with a glamorous veneer that is only paper-thin. His cast of supporting characters is set with jewels like Harry's landlord Lundin and the prissy proto-Nazi detective Olsson. And the femme fatale, the blowsy drug-addled Doris, is heartbreakingly fatal,

Clinch is the first in a trilogy of Kvist novels, apparently. Next up is Down for the Count. You can count me in!