The Redbreast, by Jo Nesbo

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo won the Glass Key prize for the best Nordic crime novel when it was first published, and was subsequently voted Norway’s best crime novel. Jo Nesbo ( Nesbø in Norwegian) is a young, wonderfully gifted storyteller that increasingly is being noticed among crime book readers in the US and UK. [...]

John Grisham and The Appeal

John Grisham is a writer I enjoy and like. Both as a person and as a writer. He is, as far as I can tell, a straight-talking, socially conscious, and likeable guy. John Grisham puts his money where his mouth is, both in politics and in charitable, philanthropic and other matters.
He was recently interviewed in [...]

Stieg Larsson - Film and Hype

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With The Dragoon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and the title of the third volume still to be decided for the English translation) is hot stuff. The sales figures to date are stunning (from Shotsmag):
2.1 million copies sold in Sweden* (the paperback of Volume III is not [...]

Missing, by Karin Alvtegen

Missing grabs the reader from the first page, and doesn’t let go until the gruesome end. This fabulous thriller won Best Scandinavian Crime Novel (previous winners include Peter Hoeg’s Miss Smilla and Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers) and Silverpocket Awards in 2002. With Missing Karin Alvtegen has enjoyed massive success all over Europe.
Sibylla Forstenström is the [...]

Before You Sleep, by Linn Ullmann

While Before You Sleep was not viewed as controversial in Norway, American reviewers have regarded it as a “detailed and sexually frank novel.” Such labels aside, Before You Sleep is a great and interesting story of a Norwegian family, Blom, with strong and also somewhat eccentric women, that spans several generations. The story moves [...]

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the first book in a trilogy written by Stieg Larsson, often referred to as the Millennium trilogy (see also our book review of The Girl Who Played With Fire at ScandinavianBooks.. The books in this trilogy have sold extremely well in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and been [...]

Top Ten Crime Books of 2007

The following list is from EuroCrime - a nice blog on European Crime fiction, as well as TV and film:

Rounding the Mark - Andrea Camilleri
The Scent of the Night - Andrea Camilleri
The Serbian Dane - Leif Davidsen
The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson
Calling Out for You! - Karin Fossum
The Chinaman - Friedrich Glauser
The Exception - [...]

Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie, by Ole Edvart Rolvaag

I just recently found Giants in the Earth on the Internet, more or less by accident. It is a great book, wonderful even. Rolvaag (or Rølvåg or Rölvaag, depending) seems to be somewhat known among Norwegian-Americans, hardly known at all to Danish-Americans or Swedish-Americans, and known by only a very, very few in Norway and [...]

Swedish Crime Writers Very Successful in UK and USA

The Swedes are invading the marked for crime and mystery in the UK and USA, and elsewhere in Europe as well. Sweden has a large - and even fast growing -number of excellent crime writers, and many of them have been translated into English during the last decade or so. Norwegian and Danish crime is [...]

John Grisham - new book and news!

John Grisham is a terrific and productive writer. Right now he is on top of the bestseller lists with his Playing for Pizza. And this month his new legal thriller, The Appeal, is going to be released.

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