Nordic Mysteries
Book List Category:
By Jussi Adler-Olsen ; translated by K.E. Semmel.
Detective Carl Mørck investigates the twenty-year-old murders of a brother and sister whose confessed killer may actually be innocent, a case with ties to a homeless woman and powerful adversaries.
By Quentin Bates.
"Officer Gunnhildur, recently promoted from her post in rural Iceland to Reyjkavík's Serious Crime Unit, is tasked with hunting down escaped convict Long Ommi, who has embarked on a spree of violent score-settling in and around the city. Meanwhile, she's also investigating the murder of a fitness guru in her own city-center apartment. As Gunna delves into the cases, she unearths some unwelcome secrets and influential friends shared by both guru and convict. Set in an Iceland plagued by an ongoing financial crisis, Gunna has to take stock of the whirlwind changes that have swept through the country--and the fact that at the highest levels of power, the system's endemic corruption still leads, inevitably, to murder"--P. [2] of cover.
By Arne Dahl ; translated from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally.
Detective Paul Hjelm is placed into an elite team of officers and sent on a mission to track down a killer who has been systematically targeting business leaders, a case that pits them against the Russian Mafia and Sweden's secret wealthy societies.
By Åke Edwardson ; translated from the Swedish by Ken Schubert.
Erik Winter, a jazz-loving Chief Inspector of police, in Gothenburg, Sweden.
By Kerstin Ekman ; translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate.
A murder mystery above the Arctic Circle in which a young artist steps into the night after an argument and freezes to death. At least, that is what the villagers tell Constable Torsson, until a blood-stained noose is found the following summer, when it becomes clear the village is protecting a secret. By a Swedish writer, author of Blackwater.
By Kjell Eriksson ; translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg.
When a jogger stumbles upon the mutilated body of the local reformed troublemaker, Inspector Ann Lindell takes time off from maternity leave to uncover the killer and is drawn into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a vicious murderer.
By Karin Fossum ; translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund.
In this fifth Inspector Sejer mystery, a little girl has vanished without a trace and Sejer must find her before it's too late.
By Inger Frimansson ; translated by Laura A. Wideburg.
Six years have passed since Justine Dalvik killed her tormentors. Her life has taken a calmer direction, and the risk of being discovered should be over. However, in her nightmares Justine sees the dead body of Berit coming up to the surface of the water of Mälaren. Friends and relatives of Berit have started to dig into the past. And a stubborn policeman with violent tendencies is becoming interested in several of the already closed investigations. As these people close in on the old stone house in which she lives with her bird, Justine feels the noose tighten around her neck.
By Anne Holt ; translated by Marlaine Delargy.
Follows the experiences of travelers who are stranded by a blizzard in a decrepit hotel where one of their number begins killing off the rest.
By Arnaldur Indriðason ; translated [from the Icelandic] by Victoria Cribb.
Unofficially investigating a suspicious suicide, Inspector Erlendur becomes increasingly unsettled by the unsolved cases of two young people who went missing decades earlier under circumstances tied to his own past.
By Mari Jungstedt ; English translation by Tiina Nunnally.
Working on an archaeological dig to uncover an ancient Viking fortification on the Swedish island of Gotland, a group of students becomes caught up in a web of horror when a young woman turns up dead, naked, and hanging from a tree, the victim of a ritual killing.
By Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis ; translated from the Danish by Lene Kaaberbol.
A novel written by two women about the criminal mistreatment of women and children, compassionately told from a feminine perspective and featuring female characters you can believe in.
By Camilla Läckberg ; translated by Steven T. Murray.
After she returns to her hometown to learn that her friend, Alex, was found in an ice-cold bath with her wrists slashed, biographer Erica Falck researches her friend's past in hopes of writing a book and joins forces with Detective Patrik Hedstrom, who has his own suspicions about the case.
By Jens Lapidus ; translated from the Swedish by Astri von Arbin Ahlander.
Follows encounters between a vengeful escaped drug dealer, a money-strapped student, and a disenchanted mafia thug whose efforts to establish places for themselves are complicated by dangerous elements on both sides of the law.
By Asa Larsson ; translated by Laurie Thompson.
It is the first thaw of spring and the body of a young woman surfaces in the River Thorne in the far north of Sweden. Rebecka Martinsson is working as a prosecutor in nearby Karuna. Her sleep has been disturbed by haunting visions of a shadowy, accusing figure. Could the body belong to the ghost in her dreams? And where is the dead girl's boyfriend? Joining forces once again with Police Inspectors Anna-Maria Mella, Rebecka is drawn into an investigation that centres on old rumours of a German supply plane that mysteriously disappeared in 1943.
By Henning Mankell ; translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson.
"The Man Who Smiled begins with Wallander deep in a personal and professional crisis after killing a man in the line of duty; eventually, he vows to quit the Ystad police force for good. Just then, however, a friend who had asked Wallander to look into the death of his father winds up dead himself, shot three times. Ann-Britt H?glund, the department?s first female detective, proves to be his best ally as he tries to pierce the smiling fa?ade of his prime suspect, a powerful multinational business tycoon. But just as he comes close to uncovering the truth, the same shadowy threats responsible for the murders close in on Wallander himself" -- publisher website (December 2006).
By Liza Marklund.
A shooting at the glamourous Nobel Prize Dinner in Stockholm enmeshes investigative reporter and witness Annika Bengtzon in a web of international terrorism and global pharmaceutical interests that forces her to track down a professional assassin.
By Jo Nesbø ; translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett.
After two young women are found dead, both drowned in their own blood, Inspector Harry Hole is compelled to return to Norway to see his dying father and to investigate the brutal crime, which may be the work of a serial killer.
By Håkan Nesser ; translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson.
It's a sweltering summer in Sweden and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is long overdue for a holiday when a secretive and dubious religious sect comes under investigation. One of its members, a girl on the cusp of adolescence, is found dead in the forest near their holiday camp, brutally raped and strangled. The members of the Pure Life choose to remain silent about the incident rather than defend themselves.
By Harri Nykanen ; translated by Kristian London.
During the period known as the Days of Awe that lead up to Yom Kippur, Ariel Kafka, inspector in the Violent Crime Unit of the Helsinki police and one of two Jewish policemen in Finland, is confronted with the most difficult case of his career. Two Arabs are killed near the capital and shortly after Kafka discovers two more bodies at an Iraqi-owned garage. Are these deaths evidence of gang warfare or international terrorism? When it transpires that an Israeli minister will make an unofficial visit to Helsinki, matters become truly complicated. The Finnish Security Police and Mossad all have a role to play and Kafka is on a trail that leads back to his youth.
By Kristina Ohlsson ; [translated by Sarah Death].
Inspector Fredericka Bergman investigates the kidnapping and murder of a child who had been separated from her mother on a crowded train on a rainy Swedish summer day, a case that points to the work of a brilliant and ruthless killer.
By Håkan Östlundh ; [translation by Per Carlsson].
A chilling crime novel set on an idyllic and isolated island in Sweden about a ruthless business consultant for a major international company who has two dead bodies on his living room floor.
By Leif G.W. Persson ; translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlen.
The first entry in a trilogy inspired by the unsolved 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme traces an investigation into an unknown American's death in Stockholm that reveals a complex web of espionage and intelligence failures.
By Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström.
An Ohio death row inmate, convicted of killing his 16-year-old girlfriend when he was 17 years old, dies of heart disease. Six years later, the police arrest a Canadian expatriate living in Sweden for repeatedly kicking a drunken man in the head. A cantankerous Det. Supt. Ewert Grens of the Stockholm police discovers that the foreigner in their jail cell is a convicted murderer, the same death row inmate who supposedly died in America six years earlier.
By Yrsa Sigurdardottir ; translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder and Anna Yates.
In the aftermath of a young woman's murder at a farmhouse-turned-health resort, lawyer Thora finds the investigation complicated by a rumor that the site is haunted, a concept that takes a toll on Thora's views of reality.
By Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö ; translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal ; [with an introduction by Liza Marklund].
The shocking ninth novel in the Martin Beck mystery series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö finds Beck investigating parallel cases that have shocked a small rural community.
By Alexander Söderberg.
Breaking her personal code to date a charming patient, Sophie Brinkmann discovers that he is the head of a powerful international crime organization warring against a ruthless German syndicate.
By Gunnar Staalesen ; translated from the Norwegian by Hal Sutcliffe.
In this crime drama, set in Bergen, Norway, detective Varg Veum's adventures take him into a dark world of privileged citizens who have been drawn into cross-dressing, drugs, and prostitution.
By Johan Theorin ; translated [from the Swedish] by Marlaine Delargy.
Joakim Westin, a grieving widower whose young daughter begins hearing ghostly voices, must solve a puzzle that includes a walled-in room and his community's mysterious glowing lighthouse.
By James Thompson.
One more missing girl is a drop in the barrel for a police department that is understaffed and overburdened, but for Kari, the case is personal: it's a chance for redemption, to help the victims his failed black-ops unit was intended to save, and to prove to his estranged wife, Kate, that he's still the man he once was. His search will lead him from the glittering world of Helsinki's high-class clubs to the darkest circles of Finland's underground trade in trafficked women... and straight into the path of some of the most untouchable people in the country....
By Helene Tursten ; translated by Katarina Emilie Tucker.
When part of a human torso that is so mutilated that its gender can only be established by DNA testing washes up on a beach near Goteborg, Sweden, Detective Inspector Irene Huss is dispatched to Copenhagen to liaise with police there in pursuing the killer.
