REALITY AS FICTION She walks east on Grønlandsleiret and eventually ends up at number 44, which turns out to be a large, glassily modern building set back in parklike grounds. Men, women, and children are heading up the winding path that leads from the street corner to the building, and she is so struck…
Although mankind would like to think that they have free will throughout their life, there is the inarguable fact that one has absolutely no control over their upbringing. We are brought into this world knowing nothing and are powerless from being imprinted with the values and ideologies of our parents, guardians, and mandated norms in…
Brrr. It’s getting cold out there! With all the snow hitting the east coast, we started to think about all the winter mysteries out there. There’s something extra sinister about a setting that’s dark, cold, and quiet that makes for a perfect murder mystery. And there are plenty of snow-covered countries where our favorites take…
If you like the setting of your murder mysteries to take place in a cold, snowy climate, you’re not alone. The newest and bloodiest murder mysteries now seem to take place in Scandinavia. There’s something about murder, mystery, and the bitter cold that seem to go together, and it seems that readers have been entertained…
One of Us by Åsne Seierstad is a true crime account of Anders Breivik, a Norwegian man who would go on a terrifying massacre that shook the country to its core (available April 21, 2015). On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb outside the Norwegian prime minister's office in central Oslo, killing…
Dreamless by Jorgen Brekke is the 2nd Nordic thriller in the Chief Inspector Odd Singsaker series (available February 10, 2015). A promising young singer is found dead in a clearing in a forest, gruesomely murdered—her larynx cut out, and an antique music box placed carefully atop her body, playing a mysterious lullaby that sounds familiar,…
Where Monsters Dwell by Jørgen Brekke is the debut in translation of a whodunit-slash-literary thriller featuring Virginia cop Felicia Stone and Inspector Odd Sinsaker of Norway as they face distant murders linked to old journal of a 16th-century serial killer (available February 11, 2014). When I received the offer, I jumped at the chance to…
For the first time in recent memory (read: more than a decade), none of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award nominees for Best Novel have ever been nominated before. On April 26th, one of them will be announced from the stage at New York’s Grand Hyatt Hotel and take a first walk with this…
Photographer Cass Neary is already wanted by the police for questioning when she receives a suspicious job offer that sends her from Helsinki to Iceland… with murder following her every step. I’m familiar with Elizabeth Hand’s dark fantasy novels, so I was excited to see how her writing translated into another genre. I have not…
Netflix is entering the subscription television world with Lilyhammer, starring Steven Van Zandt as—what else—an East Coast mobster who decides that the ideal place to hide out while in Witness Protection would be Lillehammer, Norway, which he knows about only from seeing it on television during the 1994 Olympics. Of course, things don’t work out…
