Since the early 1980s, critic Wendy Lesser (The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters) has been an avid consumer of the growing body of mystery and thriller novels set in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery is both an enthusiastic appreciation of the genre and a pleasurable work of travel writing, in which Lesser compares her lived experience in the Scandinavian countries with the fictional world she calls "my imaginary Scandinavia."
Lesser's entry point into Scandinavian crime fiction was the Martin Beck series by Swedes Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, written between 1965 and 1975. That series was nothing less than a "ten-volume police procedural that would mirror the whole society," from a "distinctly Marxist perspective," and stimulated Lesser's interest in these works as sociocultural documents.
In a series of sections that literally take the reader from A ("Alcohol") to Z ("Zealous journalists"), Lesser explains how dozens of authors, including the late Swede Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and Norwegian Jo Nesbø (author of the Harry Hole series), along with many lesser-known writers, have created a fully realized picture of Scandinavian society through their mystery offerings. What matters to her, she writes, is "how persuasively these mystery writers manage to create a world that one can imaginatively inhabit--for the duration of a first reading, initially, but also long after."
In the second half of Scandinavian Noir, Lesser shifts from literary critic to tourist, signaled by a shift in narrative voice from first person to third. From her base in Stockholm in the summer of 2018, she traverses Scandinavia, experiencing first hand life in countries that have become real for her on the page. Though she finds Copenhagen "definitely a bit grungy" compared to Stockholm and Oslo, Lesser's portrait of these countries generally is positive.
Unsurprisingly, real life--illustrated, for example, in Sweden's challenges in dealing with mass immigration from 2014 to 2017--turns out to be more complex than the stylized fictional version. Among Lesser's more interesting moments are encounters with actual police officers in the capital cities of each of these countries, where she contrasts their unassuming work with the necessarily more dramatic efforts of their fictional counterparts.
Lesser concludes the volume with a useful appendix, in which she shares her favorite Scandinavian mysteries, along with helpful commentary. Whether readers are transfixed by the spectacular exploits of Lisbeth Salander, or impressed with the doggedness of Kurt Wallander, or even if they've never encountered these characters, they'll find in Scandinavian Noir an entertaining journey into the world of these mysteries and the cultural milieu that spawned them. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: A prominent critic shares her passion for Scandinavian crime fiction and the societies it illuminates.