Scarred - Thomas Enger

Scarred is the third Henning Juul story and Enger has unfortunately slipped into the trap facing all series writers.  It's not a Henning Juul mystery at all: Henning does virtually none of the crime solving and can't get directly involved in the scandal element because the subject of the scandal is his own sister.  More daring writers would have their hero break the rules, but Enger doesn't.  When it comes to the culmination of the main crime story Juul is ordered from the scene by his friend Inspector Bjarne Brogeland and meekly goes.  Worse, even we are denied the moment when the door is broken down and the armed response unit flood in.

Theoretically, I suppose we are supposed to be kept interested in Juul by his spasmodic quest to find out who torched his flat back in the first novel.  Perhaps readers who have followed the series from the beginning are interested.  Personally, there isn't enough here to get me interested.  Juul isn't developed enough to evoke empathy.

Check out the red 'sticker' on the cover.  It's a telling and fatal admission.  Not for fans of The Killing  or aficionados of Jo Nesbo, but for followers of Borgen, a series about a female politician who keeps risking her career over her frailties as a woman.  It's a fair enough parallel.  The murders start well but get dull very quickly, and it's actually a novel about Trine Juul-Osmundsen, not her brother.

On a positive note, I really enjoyed the use of the present tense and short chapters.  If you are determined to divide your narrative between three protagonists, short, punchy chapters is the way to go.

Unwanted - Kristina Ohlsson

Unwanted is the debut from former Swedish anti-terrorism officer Kristina Ohlsson.  One might assume it would therefore be a thriller; instead it is a fairly mundane police procedural about a psycho-killer on the loose.  As the cover implies, it has been designed to cash in the post-Killing wave of Nordic Noir.  And, to an extent, it has its own Sarah Lund in the shape of Fredrika Bergman, a civilian police detective (we can but assume they exist) with a mildly idiosyncratic love-life.

Now Fredrika might make an interesting protagonist.  Unfortunately the concept of protagonist seems to have passed Ohlsson by, along with the time-honoured tradition of describing what our main characters look like.  What we get therefore is a team which is not actually a team: leader Alex Recht, who we are told is a legend but never does anything to warrant legendary status, Fredrika, and traditional low-grade plodder Peder Rydh, who has the traditional troubled homelife.  Peripheral team members are glossed over as if their first name is sufficient.  Some aren't even that developed.

The poor quality of technique is a shame because the idea is a good one.  It would be better if, when the psycho is finally cornered, we had any meaningful insight into his psychology.  Personally, given we get stream-of-consciousness from various associated characters, I would have included some from his well-warped perspective.  Instead we get an overlong epilogue in which we are told what happened next for our police friends - I for one didn't care and would have left things as near the climax as I could.

The writing itself is functional, which is all it needs to be.  There are a few typos and some sloppy proof-reading (in the ebook version, anyway), which again smacks of the quick cash-in.

All in all, interesting enough to warrant trying the second in the series, Silenced, which came out in English last month (the third, The Disappeared, is due out in August).  I would consider the ebook, I would certainly borrow from the library, but I wouldn't dream of buying the full-price paperback.

The Killer Inside Me - Jim Thompson

Thompson (1906-77) was the king of American pulp noir.  Nobody of his era did it nastier and he can still shock today.  The Killer Inside Me is probably his best novel, though I quite liked King Blood when I read it twenty or so years ago.  He takes great liberties with first person narrative, yet he gets away with it thanks to sheer bravura.

That is not to say Thompson was in any sense a poor or sloppy writer.  Let us not forget, as so many do, that he wrote the scripts of Kubrick's The Killing and Paths of Glory.  The Getaway and The Killer Inside Me have both made into Hollywood movies twice, The Grifters once.  Several others have been adapted as French movies.  Maybe it's the resolutely humdrum name, but Thompson really should be much better known than he is.

What we have here is the account of Lou Ford, Hicksville TX deputy, good old boy and psycho killer.  There are all sorts of reasons why they can't catch him.  Mainly, he's much smarter than they think he is.  Secondly, he simply doesn't care whether they catch him or not.  He's not to blame.  It's the sickness (italicised throughout), which first troubled him as a boy.  In the end, by unexpected literary sleight of hand, they do catch him.  Lou still doesn't care.  He has already prepared the final spree - for himself and others: "All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little, that meant so good and did so bad."  A sentence that pretty well defines the form.