Dead Cows Washing Up on Beaches in Sweden and Denmark

There are so many things wrong with that headline that I don't even know where to start, but the story is one that starts my creative juices flowing. There's a short, speculative fiction story brewing here. Something apocalyptic, I think. (And this is why I will never stop checking Drudge Report every day. CNN just does NOT cover news like this.) You can read the story here. Talk about your Nordic Noir.

Book review: Jo Nesbo's Nemesis

In Nemesis (now out in paperback) Jo Nesbo’s melancholy, alcoholic detective Harry Hole looks into the murder of his partner while solving a bank robbery that’s actually more complex than it looks. 

Bank manager Stine Grette has been gunned down by a robber, even though he got away with millions of kroner.  Harry teams up with nondescript detective Beate Lønn, who spots numerous little details he’s missed, and the two of them are convinced that there’s a larger crime behind the crime they’ve witnessed.

Harry, though, is somewhat distracted. His ongoing obsession with the murder of his partner (beaten to death by a baseball bat) continues to affect his work, and a woman from his past has shown up just as Rakel, his current girlfriend, flies to Moscow to deal with her young son Oleg’s father, a Russian who wants custody of the boy.

Feminist Fiction Friday: Anne Holt

You like Nordic Noir?  Looking around for something to read now that you've hoovered through Jo Nesbo's oeuvre? You might want to check out Anne Holt, a remarkable Norwegian writer whose background includes a stint as a Minister of Justice, a news editor and anchor and a lawyer. She's also a mother.
She made her fiction debut in 1993 with Blind Goddess, a novel that kicked off a series "starring" Hanne Wilhelmsen, a lesbian police officer.
I'm currently reading What is Mine, the first in a series of mysteries featuring Adam Stubo and Johanne Vik.  It's a really dark story involving child-napping and murder, with a subplot about a man wrongfully convicted of the same sort of crime decades ago.
Holt is Norwegian, although she's spent time in both the US and France, and her work reflects the Scandinavian attitude toward sexual equality. In What is Mine, a little girl casually mentions that her grandmother is an electrician, a job that is still, at least in the US, more likely to be man's work. the fthers of the children involved in the plot are all directly involved in their upbringing, and in some cases are more nurturing than the mothers.  Adam is a widower whose wife and daughter died in a horrible accident that's almost ludicrously unlikely, but he is incredibly tender with his grandson and with Johanne's mentally disabled child Kristiane.
From the first time Johanne and Adam meet, there's a frisson of sexual attraction, but it is not without complications. These people are adults and their lives are complex and they have pasts and they have responsibilities, The portrait of Kristiane is an excellent fictional portrait of a child with a mental disability, right up there with the autistic characters in Speed of Dark and Memoir of an Imaginary Friend. No one quite knows what's going on with Kristiane and her mother is driving herself crazy looking for answers.
Holt has written a number of books in the almost 20 years she's been a novelist and she's one of the best-selling writers in Norway.
She's on Facebook
She's got an author page at Simon & Schuster's site..
Here's a podcast where she talks about her new Hanne novel (a locked-room mystery).

The Western as Noir

Screenwriter S. Craig Zahler's novel A Congregation of Jackals, is so compelling but bleak that it shares kinship with the Nordic Noir genre of mysteries.

In many ways, this novel reminds us of classic western films like High Noon and the contemporary western Bad Day at Black Rock with a little detour through Deadwood. There are bad guys who are truly bad and good guys who once weren’t and they’re all on a collision course at a wedding. The writer takes his time setting things up and by the time the actual confrontation occurs, it’s almost as mythic as the gunfight at the OK Corral.

The characters are strong. A man named Oswell is the heart and soul of the story and much of it is told through his eyes and in his voice. We tend to expect that he is the one who will die in Montana, though, because he is the one with the most to lose. (The story is a little on the predictable side.)

Some of the characters seem to be a little “quirky” and some aren’t really necessary, but the writer is going for something kind of epic here and that means he’s painting on a broad canvas.

There are some really nice moments between Beatrice and her father, including a scene where he tells her he’s saved all his life to make sure that when she gets pregnant, she’ll have a doctor’s care. There’s clearly love between these characters and we know that he would die for her without hesitation. (We just hope he won’t have to.)

The writer gets major points for populating his West with a multi-cultural cast. There are blacks, there are Asians, and there are Native Americans. Adding these characters adds to the authenticity of the mix. A lot of the ethnic characters don’t fare too well—there’s a messenger named PICKLES who has the misfortune of knowing way too much about Quinlan’s plans—but they add “color” to the goings on.

There are some interesting subplots, like the connection between the Sheriff and the condescending widow. Their original antagonism melts into something else in true romantic drama tradition. There are some little bits of plot that feel completely contrived though, especially the weird encounter Dicky has with the blind man in the hotel.

The author tries hard to get the flavor of the times, often resorting to grandiloquent language (some of which isn’t used quite right). He never quite gets into LITTLE BIG MAN territory, though. On the other hand, it’s clear he’s done a lot of research into the period and there are period touches that really sell the reality of the story and its backdrop.

Some of the detail is astonishing and original—like a description of snake spines woven into the hair of the Appanuqi chief, who walks a leashed and grotesquely tortured Mexican like a pet. The scenes with the Indians—including the massacre that is the “inciting incident” for the whole revenge quest—are tough to read and would be even tougher on screen. The violent way that Quinlan takes over the tribe, beating and humiliating the chief, is only a prelude to what will happen later.

Arthur and his unnamed twin are evil forces of nature and we almost fear them more than we fear Quinlan. (Quinlan feels like he was modeled after Quantrill, the marauding outlaw who terrorized the West after the end of the Civil War.)

The story builds to a shattering climax that isn’t truly original and isn’t particularly surprising. (We always knew Oswell was a dead man walking.) The story-telling, though, is absorbing and while the narrative is a bit predictable and a little derivative, we are carried along. The ending is DIRE.