MORE SCANDEWEGIAN NOVELS

Nowhere to post reviews.  So here they are.

I wasn’t impressed by Liza Marklund’s Prime Time, featuring young journalist, Annika Bengtzon.  I thought the characters were a bit thin and the plot a bit Agatha Christie.  Maybe Marklund’s publisher had wanted another novel quickly at the time?  Anyway, I persisted and read 2 more murder thrillers featuring the same media characters.

Exposed by Liza Marklund 

This has the trainee journalist, Annika Bengtzon, manning the tip-off phoneline on a work placement at Stockholm's biggest tabloid newspaper.  Of course she receives a call informing her that the body of a young woman has been found and she investigates. The blurb says, ‘There is suddenly far more at stake here than Annika's career, and the more questions she asks, the more she leaves herself dangerously exposed.’  This sensational build-up seems a bit misplaced (or maybe it’s from another novel).  Anyway, I quite enjoyed this rather more solid tale and Bengtzon came across as more three-dimensional.  Without spoiling the story too much, I can say that Bengtzon stumbles across video footage that places the main suspect hundreds of miles from the crime scene, right at the time of the murder.  'That night he did something so controversial that he'd rather be suspected of murder than tell anyone what he was really doing. What could possibly be worse than that?'  A nice premise and a sign that she is after all an instinctive investigative journalist.  And I am still fascinated at the way information is so readily available in Sweden.

Red Wolf by Liza Marklund

This one has Annika Bengtzon, now a crime reporter, investigating a death against the explicit orders of her boss, which seems to lead to a series of deaths, including that of a journalist investigating the same incident.  I am not reading these books in the order they were written, so there were references here to previous episodes that I didn’t understand, but, again, it was a good story that I enjoyed.  There was still though the unnecessary sensationalism (‘Caught in a frenzied spiral of secrets and violence, Annika finds herself and her marriage at breaking point. Will her refusal to stop pursuing the truth eventually destroy her?’)  It was an interesting read, but the ‘frenzied spiral’ and acts which might ‘eventually destroy her’ were tricky to find.  It was set in the north of Sweden, in the middle of a particularly freezing winter, which added that air of gloom and foreboding and devastation that makes Nordic thrillers the genre that they are.  My only real complaint is the attempt here to turn Bengtzon into a human being with personal problems and baggage.  This genre is usually good at doing this, but somehow the little girl who constantly breaks down into tears when her boss is cross with her, doesn’t square with the constant references to her as ‘top crime reporter’ and ‘dogged investigator’.  But there, she’s a woman, written about by another woman; what do I know?  The incidents investigated, by the way, are all based on real life events, which makes them credible I suppose, but also an uncomplicated, easy-read series.

The Inspector and Silence by Hakan Nesser.   

Another case for Swedish Chief Inspector Van Veeteren.  I still don’t know quite what to make of these novels.  The story was interesting enough - a girl went missing from the summer camp of a mysterious religious sect and a young girl's body is subsequently discovered in the woods nearby, raped and strangled.  This time, the story is set in the soporific heart of a summer heat-wave, which provides an interesting counter-point to the usual ice and snow and Nordic gloom.  I like the way the investigation unwinds in these thrillers, usually coming to a dead end when there are no more clues to pursue and leading to painstaking, laborious re-examinations.  I’m sure most police investigations are like this.  Here, the sect refuses to cooperate and all lines of enquiry run into the scorching sand around the forested lake.  Van Veeteren is approaching retirement and is in holiday mood, but is asked to apply his usual intuition when the police have more or less given up making progress and there is another murder.  So far, so good.  What I’m not sure about though is that, as in previous Van Veeteren stories, we are never given an insight into this famous intuition.  The detective goes off, apparently enjoying the glorious weather, boating on the lake and sitting in pub gardens, yet somehow makes progress where the combined might of the police force has failed.  And I’m not quite sure I really like Van Veeteren either.  Anyway, a good atmospheric piece and a credible crime tale in the usual readable style (by Mankell’s translator).

Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

This is the first book in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s - the novels that set the tone and the standard of Scandinavian crime writing to come, if not crime writing in general.  I was very please to get hold of it at last.  It was reading this book, as a young man, that enthralled Henning Mankell and inspired him to start writing and to invent Wallender.  The enigmatic, taciturn, overworked, job-obsessed Martin Beck indeed is the model for many detectives since, such as Rebus and Scudder.  Despite a few references to outdated views of the time, it stands up well today.  The authors intended their stories to be firmly socialist in nature and critical, if not of society, of the government of the time.  This is a theme Mankell took up with gusto, as his Wallander looks on in mystification at the way Swedish society has developed.  That commentary, the unglamorous detective, and the slow build-up of the suspense in Roseanna, must have been stunning at the time.  Even now, it is still a good read.  The naked body of a young woman is dredged up from a Swedish canal. She has been sexually assaulted and strangled.  But no one has reported her missing and Martin Beck can find no clue to her identity.  Three months later, all that Police Inspector Martin Beck knows is that her name is Roseanna, that she came from Lincoln, Nebraska, and that she could have been strangled by any one of eighty-five people.  As the investigation struggles on, it is of course the detective and his preoccupations on which we focus.  Great stuff.  Must now to try to find some more in the series.

Missing by Karin Alvtegen. 

Another new author – no doubt now appearing on library shelves because of the continuing popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction.  In The Grand Hotel, a homeless woman charms a businessman into paying for dinner and a room. When his dead body is discovered the following morning she becomes the prime suspect. When a second person is killed in similar circumstances, Sybilla, having left her comfortable middle-class upbringing for the anonymity of the streets, becomes the most wanted person in Sweden . . .  I have now read several novels involving homeless persons on the streets of Sweden; they can’t all be total fiction.  Perhaps all these novels coninue to shine a light on the disjointed, unequal nature of society in Sweden.  I found that aspect of the story fascinating.  I also quite like the plot line – one which has been much done before (Frantic, The Fugitive, North by North-West, and other Hitchcock films).  But this is not so much a murder thriller as a journey by our heroine to find her way in life.  Those she meets on her way provide keys to her eventual existence.  But we do want to know who dunnit too.  Not a detective thriller as such, but an interesting book.  On the strength of the blurb on the back of this book, I borrowed it and another by Alvtegen, without checking the blurb on the second book.  That turned out not to be a thriller at all.

Sacrifice by Karin Alvtegen.

Monika is driven to succeed as a doctor - but cannot allow herself any personal happiness. Maj-Britt is desperate to be left alone.  A tragic accident brings these two strangers together.  The blurb then says, ‘forcing them to confront their darkest fears’; I must have missed that bit.  The blurb also asks, ‘why does she shun society?’  I still don’t know.  Again, I found that reading a tale of characters in another land, their lifestyles and their decisions interesting in itself.  But, despite the surprise ending, not really my glass of aquavit at all.

Midwinter Sacrifice by Mons Kallentoft.

Yet another Swedish crime thriller to appear on the crest of the wave of Scandi-fever.  This novel introduces a female hero for a change, Malin Fors, a detective with the usual kinds of messy personal baggage (a thirty-one-year-old single mother), but possessing special investigative skills.  She is first on the scene, when a naked man is found hung from a tree on a frozen plain in the middle of nowhere.  For a while, no one knows the identity of the dead man, but it seems that maybe no one cares. A tale of small town society trying to keep its secrets hidden.  This was in the end a run of the mill thriller, with a plot that I quite enjoyed.  Malin is a good characterisation and her instincts are what makes her a good detective and keeps things moving along.  And of course the cold and snow make it what it is.  What I hated though were the ‘voices’ that linked each chapter.  It’s fine, and a normal plotting conceit, to have persons in the background voicing their thoughts to help the reader understand motives and actions.  But having the dead man speaking to Malin was a bit weird and I found it an unnecessary distraction.  I read another review which said that the voices were what Malin could ‘hear’ and what drove her instincts.  Sorry, I didn’t understand that at the time.  Maybe, now you know, it won’t disturb you quite as much as it did me.

The Day is Dark by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Another, the fourth, Thóra Gudmundsdóttir story.  Thora is an Icelandic solicitor, who investigates primarily for insurance claims, but who ends up resembling a Scandinavian detective.  She has a few problems at home and personal frictions, but these serve only to make her more human and do not overshadow the story, as they often can.  In this investigation, contact has been lost with two Icelanders working in a harsh and sparsely-populated area of Greenland.  Thóra is hired to investigate.  In everyone’s mind too is the fact that a woman had vanished from the site some months earlier.  The almost sunless days of the Greenland winter provide a nice brooding backdrop to the novel and the tensions that arise between the members of the team in this lonely, unforgiving, place are entirely credible.  The inexplicable hostility of the locals adds to the unsettling atmosphere.  And I was rudely reminded that Scandinavian countries are not all one, as the Icelanders grapple with Danish and English to make themselves understood to the Greenlanders.  A chilling tale in more senses than one and with nicely created shocks at the end of almost each chapter.  The most gripping to date of the Thora novels.  Sigurdardottir has now acquired the ‘Iceland’s Larsson’ or ‘if you liked Nesbo’ tag, which is helpful only to those selling the book, in other words not helpful at all.  Would make a good film I reckon, with scary music and inexplicable things happening all the time.  A great read this one.

The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler

And yet another new author, in fact another husband and wife writing team, and the book has apparently sold millions all around the world.  I can only guess that that is because, like so many these days, it says on the cover, ‘if you liked Stieg Larsson and are missing The Killing buy this'.  In fact it’s nothing like either.  It’s a good story – quite fast-moving, exciting, complex, mystifying, etc – all that a crime thriller needs to be.  A gruesome triple murder attracts the interest of Detective Inspector Joona Linna, who demands to investigate. There is only one witness - the boy whose family was killed before his eyes.  But he is deeply wounded and is comatose with shock.  Linna engages Dr. Erik Bark to hypnotise the boy, hoping to discover the killer through his eyes.  But Bark has sworn never again to practise hypnotism on traumatised patients.  And so the story unfolds and leads where no one expected.  So far so good, as a premise.  But it has received quite a lot of poor criticism (which makes the claim of it being an international sensation a bit odd).  Firstly, there are too many main characters.  Is the hypnotist the hero?  We follow all his problems, his cases, his personal life, his involvement with this case.  Or is Linna the hero?  He is after all the detective trying to unravel the mystery.  But we don’t learn too much about him.  Why is he the top detective, etc?  Does he solve this case or does someone else in fact?  Then there is a sub-plot with some other characters; I wasn’t quite sure who they were.  Why was that there?  Maybe that is one of the problems of a husband/wife writing team?  Anyway, sort all that out, or ignore it completely, and you’re left with a gripping tale that is well worth the read.   Oh, and why is hypnotism the only solution at the start?  And why does he have to use a discredited hypnotist who has sworn never to work again?  Oh, never mind; it’s a thriller, it has crimes and a detective, and it’s Swedish.

Disgrace by Jussi Adler-Olsen

You may remember that I quite enjoyed Mercy (The Keeper of Lost Causes in the US), this author’s first book, when the unsolved crime department was set up.  Well, here’s his second book.  After the ‘success’ of the first case, Carl Mørck now has a second assistant and things are going better than he expected.  But he decides to take on a case where the killer confessed and is just completing his long prison sentence.  Why?  Who knows?  He’s an instinctive detective after all!  The case concerns the murder of a brother and sister twenty years earlier.  A group of boarding school students were the suspects at the time, until one of them confessed.  If this is another book that offers a commentary on present day society (this time Danish), it’s pretty damning.  Again we follow closely a girl who lives on the streets.  She has learnt to be invisible and elude the police and the rest of her boarding school friends who want to find her.  She steals and beats up people who tangle with her.  But she has lots of money and is not entirely sane.  All this seems to be because of her treatment by her friends and her parents.  We are never told why they treated her this way.  Perhaps it doesn’t matter; the case is after all about the friends.  These are now very wealthy prominent citizens, who have achieved their success through ruthlessness, cruelty and a bit of illegality.  How they now live their lives and amuse themselves is somewhat incredible, even to a common pauper like me.  But there we are – this is the upper echelon of Danish society.  Perhaps the girl on the streets is the indictment of these excesses?  Anyway, the police characters are filling out nicely and this book has a new translator which makes the language rather easier to accept than Mercy.  The story runs along nicely and is exciting enough to keep interest until the end.  Although did the detective actually solve the crime?  There is still much that isn’t explained here, but maybe, with the exciting ending particularly, we can wait until the next novel.  I enjoyed it anyway.  I wouldn’t want to meet any of these upper class Danish types though.  Hopefully the next book will continue to develop the characters and will have an investigation on the same, more routine lines.  Hopefully too one that is actually unsolved, since he seems to have hundreds of such cases on his desk.

DIVINE STATUE

One of the sights on my list for our trip oop north was Antony Gormley's Angel of the North.

It is often the case that there is massive opposition to a project undertaken in the name of art.  The Angel was indeed controversial.  But, as far as I know, it has now been accepted and indeed is much loved.  If nothing else, it has become an icon of The North.

What I hadn't been aware of, mostly because I hadn't given it much thought, was how much work was involved in erecting it.  I realised that it was quite big.  And of course quite heavy.  But I hadn't associated that with the transport and foundations needed for such a massive work in such an exposed location.  Read about it here.

Anyway, it is quite fabulous and, on the day we visited, was crowded with people who had just stopped to stand and stare.  Here are a couple of shots for you.

WAITROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

Upmarket supermarket Waitrose ran a customer survey on Twitter, in which readers were asked to complete the following sentence - 'I shop at Waitrose because . . .'  This is a prime example of a fairly staid business trying to get with it and make use of the new-fangled social networking media.  And getting it rather wrong.  You may have seen some of the answers which appeared in the national press (the old-fangled paper sort).  Well, they amused me; so her are a few.

'... because I don't like being surrounded by poor people.'

'... because the toilet paper is made from 24ct gold thread.'

'... because Clarrissa's pony just will not eat Asda value straw.'

'... because, darling, Harrods is just too much of a trek mid-week.'

'... because I want to prove to Jeremy Kyle that I am not a 21-year old dole scrounging father of two.'

TALK TO ME

TALK TO ME

ROMAN AROUND BRITAIN

It is hard to imagine now, since it lies in the heart of the County of Lincolnshire, 30 miles from the nearest coastline, but the City of Lincoln was once an important port.  In fact it had been a port since pre-historic days, thanks to the widening of the River Trent at Lincoln into a pool or harbour.  In Roman and Viking times, and right through the Middle Ages, Lincoln was one of the wealthiest cities in Britain.

It’s original name (not so original actually) was Lindo, the Celt word for ‘The Pool’.  The Romans latinised it into Lindum and then Lindum Colonia.  We then Britannised it into Lincoln.  The Fosse Way, one of the main Roman roads in Britain, ran through here from the south to the north.  Today it bears the more prosaic Anglo-Saxon name – ‘the A1’.  But it is still typically, and seemingly endlessly, Roman.

The only problem with straight roads that entirely ignore geographical features is that they have more ups and downs than Kingda Ka.

Anyway, we took this road from Londinium all the way to Lindum Colonia.  Lincoln Cathedral, built on one of the only real hills for miles, dominates the town.  Here it is from the High Street.  

 

This is the High Street.

 

The walk up to the Cathedral was a lot tougher than it looked.  Here we are about halfway.

 

But the road up is lined with historic buildings.  This is the 12^th century so-called 'Jew’s House'.

 

Sadly, the Lincoln Jews, one of the most important Jewish communities in England at the time, suffered from the widespread anti-Semitic riots and those that were not thrown into the Tower were expelled towards the end of the 13^th century.  Here’s another part of the road up.

 

This area is actually known as Steep Hill, Uphill.  The Romans had much prettier names for places, didn’t they.  But, before they converted to Christianity and before they even knew what a cathedral was, the Romans had taken to this hill as a perfect site for a massive fort, which would oversee the whole region and keep an eye on the north-south supply route.  The castle was rebuilt, for the same reasons, after the Norman Conquest.  Here is the main entrance.

 

This is the view over the town and surrounding countryside from just outside the Castle.

 

And this is the inner castle.

 

Here is the square in front of the Castle.

 

It’s a pity David Cameron didn’t know that Magna Carta is the name of a pub.  The Lincoln pubs, by the way, (for me, as a Southerner) had odd names.  This is the City Vaults.

 

And this is the Treaty of Commerce.

 

Lincoln remains proud of its wealthy commercial past.  But today, most major industry has gone and its economy is again dependent on the commerce with which it first began, and tourists like me.  It remains a city in the middle of nowhere, but is a first stopping off place for arrivals by ship at the great ports of Eastern England.  Modern trade is thus with the Baltics.

But back to Uphill.  The Cathedral itself is of unusual design, with three towers, the central of which has the tallest spire in Europe and was long considered the tallest man-made structure in the world.  It dates from the 11^th century, although much of it was rebuilt after a surprising earthquake in 1185.  I suppose all earthquakes are surprising, but it is rare to have one in UK.  You can see the three towers from here.

 

It is a very lovely building.  Here are a couple more shots.

And it is in remarkably good condition.  

 

The next day we continued our journey up the Fosse Way.

SILVER LINING

Just to let you know.  Although the weather reports are dire, we seem to have missed most of the bad rainfall and winds.  Today we went for a walk across the fields behind Alnwick Castle and then drove across the causeway to Holy Island.  There were a few drops of rain, but there was also sunshine and we had a fabulous day.  The River Aln , however, usually a pleasant brook, was a raging torrent three times its usual width. 

The road south of here seems to be closed however, so we might not be able to end this holiday as soon as we had planned . . .

SEASON OF MISTS Part 2

Sussex Border Path Leg 5b

After lunch we walked through the churchyard, in which conveniently the pub seemed to be built.

Passing a house with an interesting trompe l'oeuil wall.

 And further signs of autumn.

The path then led through the grounds of a former country house, now a nursing home.

And through the gardens which had been left to run riot.  You could see the invasive nature of the rhododendrons.

 

We were constantly reminded that we now nearing Gatwick airport.

 

Here we entered Stane Street, the old Roman Road from Chichester to London (or Noviomagus Reginorum to Londinium).

 

And like all Roman roads, it just went on and on.

But we turned off through the grounds of a lovely old farm house.

We were watched all the way through the farm.

 

And took a short cut across a pheasant shoot from which birds constantly lept shrieking.

 

You can see one of the feed bins on the edge of the cover.  To a scene of idyllic English countryside, with sheep,

 

and a llama . . .

  

But from here the destination pub (and bus stop for buses to the station) was soon in view. 

SEASON OF MISTS AND FRUITLESSNESS Part 1

Sussex Border Path Leg 5a

OK, I'm supposed to be taking the rubbish to the tip, ready for our trip up north.  And I haven't started packing yet.  so I can't be long.  But here are some pics from our further walk along the Sussex Border Path.

I love this month.  Autumn is in the air, and there is a definite chill in the early morning, yet the days can be sunny and warm.  The greens of summer are beginning to be tinged with reds and yellows, and the hedgerows are full of delectable treats.  But, no.  This year the fruit just hasn't materialised.  The year has been so dry and then so wet in quite the wrong order and magnitude, that apple trees are often barren and blackberries taste dusty and tart. But the rest was definitely true yesterday.

We began our journey from the Sir Roger Tichborne at Alfold.

 

From here, we were soon onto a woodland path.  One with a seemingly unnecessary notice.

 

The path led through the grounds of the Rikkyo Japanese school, where students were learning javelin techniques.  Perhaps synchronised throwing is to be a new Olympic sport.

 

A nearby house looked rather ranch-like.

But the woodland looked pretty in the autumn sunshine.

 

On the hills we saw what might be red kites, now quite a long way from where they were introduced to the country though.  I need Fabi to identify this.

 

The path followed a ridge through farmland, now harvested, with wide views both north and south.

 

And fairly quickly to Rudgwick, the only village on the walk, and where we therefore had to succumb to an early lunch.  This is that unusual animal, an Italian pub.  Maybe should be called la Testa del Re.

Even more unusual, lunch was an escalope followed by ice cream or coffee for £5.  If only Rudgwick was somewhere other than the middle of nowhere, it would be worth returning for the excellent-sounding Italian menu (and excellent prices!).

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I am not likely to be around tomorrow, as we're walking another leg of the Sussex Border Path.  Then, on Friday, we are off to Northumberland. 

When I retired, I decided that, as I hadn't travelled much in the UK, I would visit every major town and city and then maybe smaller towns and villages, starting with what I thought were the most well-known.  That sounds quite a lot I know, but I anticipated having few commitments and, perhaps once a month, that we would visit somewhere almost at random. 

The first city I chose was Great Yarmouth.  I don't know why I settled on Yarmouth.  Perhaps I subconsciously thought we'd start at the end of the alphabet and work our way backwards alphabetically.  But maybe I went about it the wrong way.  We didn't do any research; I thought we could just turn up, drive around a bit, walk around a bit, go to the Tourist Information office, have lunch, see the recommended sights and come home.  But Yarmouth wasn't 'great' at all.  In fact it was all rather horrible.

We didn't find any of the sights especially interesting and the fresh fish lunch was not particularly tasty either.  We were a little discouraged after that.  In practice, we now go down to the West Country once a month and wander around there instead.

But we are now attempting to reactivate our plans, if in a slightly different form.  So we are going to Northumberland, the most northerly county of England.  We have decided what we want to see while we are there and I have decided what I want to eat.  We will walk a little and no doubt eat a lot.  We are expecting it to be great.  See you in a week or so.

A DROP OF PORT

I am conscious that I haven't got round to posting pics of my trip to France earlier this year.  For some reason or other, I seem to have been too busy with my present life to find time to catch up on old doings.  But I'll try to tell you a little about what we did.

My two very close friends of many years standing (and sitting for that matter) kindly offered, at a time when I didn't expect even to be walking, to take us to France in their car.  I was in fact by then quite mobile, although more nervous than I am now about vigorous activity.  Still, we did walk a bit and I made sure I had my daily constitutional to try to build muscles up again.  It was all rather special, if now seemingly such a long time ago.  I am planning to offer to drive them next year (if not mad, at least to somewhere as lovely and enjoyable as this).

My friends had done everything - booked ferry, booked hotel, prepared itineraries, etc.  It was truly wonderful!  All we had to do was lie back and not think too much of England.

This was the delightful hotel we stayed in in Honfleur.

That's me in the garden, taking a quiet moment before dins to read a book.  And here are my friends exploring a backstreet off the old harbour.

 

And this is a scenic view of the old harbour.

It's lovely isn't it.  I just couldn't stop taking photographs of it.

This is the east side.

And this is the west side, where all the portside restaurants are.  It didn't matter that most of them sold the same food (moules, etc); the setting was just delightful and it was the place to sit and sip a glass of something and watch the sun go down.

This is a sail - technically known, as all nautically-minded folks will tell you, as the little triangular one at the pointy end of the fishing boat.