Some Mini Scandi Reviews II

Here are brief reviews of some of the Scandi books I've read this year. I'm including Vargas here as Iceland plays a significant role in her latest Adamsberg.

Karin Fossum – hellfire tr. Kari Dickson

Another bleak outing from Karin Fossum. It starts with the murder of a mother and child and the narrative subsequently alternates between events of several months leading up to the present day, and the present day investigation by series regular, Sejer. Fossum really knows how to break a reader's heart.





Leif G W Persson – The Dying Detective tr. Neil Smith

Shortlisted for the Petrona Award 2017 and winner of the CWA International Dagger 2017, there's not much to add to that. I loved this book. Borrowing from a tradition (I think) begun with Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, our ailing detective Lars Martin Johansson is laid up and asked to investigate a cold case from his sick bed - incidentally a case messed up by one Evert Backstrom. He must find the killer of a little girl. As the statue of limitations has passed what can they do if they do find the murderer? One of the many questions pondered by Johansson.

Yrsa Sigurdardottir – Why Did You Lie? tr. Victoria Cribb

Also shortlisted for the Petrona Award 2017, Why Did You Lie? is a multi-person narrative – how do their stories overlap and who is behind the sinister events affecting each person? This is the sort of book that when you get to the conclusion you then have to go back to the beginning of the book to see how it's all been cleverly woven together. Some of the narratives are more compelling than others so overall it doesn’t quite live up to the heights of the Petrona Award winning The Silence of the Sea, which I loved.


Fred Vargas – A Climate of Fear tr. Sian Reynolds

This is the latest in the Commissaire Adamsberg series to reach us in English, and it was shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger 2017. This one is mostly set in Paris and surroundings with a significant thread playing out in Iceland which necessitates a visit by Adamsberg and some of his colleagues. Vargas weaves her usual fantastical tale this time revolving around Robespierre and the French Revolution/Reign of Terror. I found this topic interesting up to a point but the pace of the book sags in the middle after what seems like countless historical re-enactments and only springs back to life in the subsequent Icelandic section. Overall this was a bit of a disappointment compared to her usual 5-star outings. Nonetheless she's always worth a read but it's perhaps not the best one to start with.

Review: Dog Will Have His Day by Fred Vargas tr. Siân Reynolds

Dog Will Have His Day by Fred Vargas translated by Siân Reynolds, April 2014, 256 pages, Harvill Secker, ISBN: 1846558190

Reviewed by Lynn Harvey.
(Read more of Lynn's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Paquelin leaned over the object more closely. The little thing was gnawed, corroded, pierced with dozens of pinpricks, and slightly brown in colour. He'd seen bones before, but no, this fellow must be having him on.

Paris, 1995
Marthe, who must be about 70 now, is sitting in the café doing a crossword when Louis Kehlweiler comes in. She interrogates Louis at the top of her voice as usual: what’s he doing here – what's he working on – where's the girlfriend? Louis, one-time investigator for the Ministry of Justice tells her, not unkindly, to keep her voice down and, after a drink together, sees her home. He is on his way to one of his many observation posts – “Bench 102”. Here he keeps an eye on the nephew of a far-right politician. And although it is pouring with rain, Kehlweiler knows how to look like a tramp on a bench under a tree. He pulls a disgusted face. Some dog has done his business at the foot of the tree. That's happened since Kehlweiler was last at here at lunch-time.
Next morning, back at the bench, one of his helpers – Vincent – is already in place. Louis asks if Vincent minds if he puts Bufo on the bench; Bufo is Louis' confidante and companion, a pet toad. Vincent has no objection. But he tells Louis that Marthe is homeless, evicted by a landlord keen to redevelop. It was typical of Marthe's pride not to have let on when Louis delivered her to her front door last night. Louis is distracted by a tiny white object under the tree, where the dog had left its calling card. A bone. A human bone. A toe bone in fact.
The Paris police are not interested in the bone. Kehlweiler feels he has no option but to do what he does, which is to investigate. Using his small army of “co-investigators” and street-contacts he keeps watch on the routine evening dog-walkers. He even calls for help from medieval historian Marc Vandoosler, already employed in maintaining the archive of cuttings necessary for Kehlweiler's investigations. When Vandoosler finds no reports of Paris deaths that would tally with the toe bone, Kehlweiler asks him to broaden the search to recent deaths outside Paris. One – an elderly woman who fell and died whilst collecting winkles from rocks in Brittany – tallies with the ownership of a certain dog and draws Kehlweiler and Bufo to the far west.

An unashamed Vargas fan, I've been looking forward to DOG SHALL HAVE HIS DAY. This is not a new Vargas book in fact, but a translation by Vargas's long-time prize-winning translator into English, Siân Reynolds, of the second Three Evangelists book which was published in France in 1996. As such, it re-introduces us to the young archaeologist/historian trio of THE THREE EVANGELISTS and in particular, to the medievalist Marc Vandoosler, clad in black and still searching for chivalric love. But it is the obsessive investigator Louis Kehlweiler, mysterious as to his own past, family and nationality, who is central to this story of a bone, a toe, a corpse and a dog.

If you know the work of four-times CWA International Dagger Award winner, Fred Vargas, you know to expect a crime story of mystery and suspense filled with rich characters and regionality. And although these characters are rich to the point of eccentricity, they still convince. DOG WILL HAVE HIS DAY does not disappoint. An earlier book, it is more of a straightforward "whodunnit" than some of the Adamsberg books. But the Vargas eye and ear for individual character, voice and conversation is all here. She has said in an interview: "I like to use these people from villages. Theirs are the voices that never move and never change." Her innate knowledge of community and character which she depicts with humanity is what make her books a joy. They are deeply “French” – in the tradition of the films of Renoir and Truffaut: life is here, complete with both humour and tragedy, but not painted so dark as to make traumatic reading. DOG WILL HAVE HIS DAY is a well-told intriguing mystery: a story about people's lives, desires and intrigues. So, although there is no Inspector Adamsberg, this is Vargas through and through. Read and savour.

Lynn Harvey, April 2014.