BEHIND THE LABEL OF "NORDIC NOIR": ARNE DAHL'S EUROPA BLUES

I've written a review at Medium, nominally about an Arne Dahl Intercrime novel, but more about the place of Scandinavian crime fiction and the label of "Nordic Noir". You can link to it here, without having to sign up to Medium, though that would not be a bad thing.

ARNE DAHL'S TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN

Television has overtaken Arne Dahl. The small problem with the publishing of his 'new' novel, written in 2000, is that fans who watch the torrent of Scandinavian series on BBC4 will have seen the two-part adaptation of it last year. It's a small problem because the writing is a different enough experience, and the time-frame is long enough, for this to be a unique experience worth savoring on its own.

I wrote about Dahl's Blinded Man last year (you can link to that here) and pointed out its place in the Sjowall/Wahloo and Henning Mankell tradition, but how Paul Hjelm, Dahl's erstwhile lead character, actually isn't a protagonist in the same way as Martin Beck or Wallander. Dahl's sense of the team dynamic is very strong, and it is that dynamic that carries the books, and the TV series, though in different ways for each. In fact, on television, it is the casting which helps give the characters depth, and oddly enough, the one bit of casting that doesn't seem to reflect the novels is Shanti Roney, a bit too young and edgy for Hjelm. They've also changed Hultin, the unit commander, to a woman, but that actually works fine.

The novel begins with the Intercrime unit having been disbanded, after the events of Bad Blood, but they are reunited when a series of crimes – a prisoner being blown up in a maximum security prison, a massacre in a bar, and attacks on a major drug lord all seem to tie together. What makes it more interesting is that Gunnar Nyberg, the former Mr. Sweden, has been working with the paedophile unit, and is torn about whether to give up that work or return. Eventually, of course, that strand will intersect the others, in effect making the decision for him.

It's a fine story. Dahl works easily with complicated plots, and only once has to resort to the helpful hand of coincidence: Aarto Sodersted, the Finnish-Swede, is checking the personals in the Swedish equivalent of Car Buyer, and finds an important clue. Dahl's tried to set up the likelihood, but it still seems a catching point. On television, of course, such coincidences can be sped past in the car chase of resolution, which is an advantage.

But what makes the story work so well is Dahl's handling of characters. He's deft at giving out enough of his cops' emotions to create dilemmas within the story, but he's almost as good with the supporting cast and the villains, keeping point of view firmly in line, and thus creating the framework of a classic whodunit but filling it in with the depth of conflict which makes this one of the very best police procedural series being written anywhere.

To The Top Of The Mountain by Arne Dahl

Harvill Secker £14.99 ISBN 9781846558085

This review will also appear in Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

ARNE DAHL'S BLINDED MAN

I haven't yet watched BBC4's broadcasts of the TV adaptation of Arne Dahl's novel, but when I read the book a few months ago I was struck by how firmly it was anchored in what I consider the classic Swedish tradition, which flows from Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Martin Beck, and how consciously it seems to address modern society, while still maintaining its suspense as a police procedural.

The Blinded Man begins with two seemingly unconnected events—a well-planned bank robbery and a hostage situation in an immigration office. The first is unexplained. In the second, we follow Paul Hjelm, whose day begins with yet another instance of missed communicaton with his wife. Hjelm then has to deal with the Kosovar Albanian who's been let down by the system in the only way he can figure out how, by shooting him, non-fatally. For that, he is suspended and investigated for misconduct, but in the meantime he is recruited to join a new elite task force being assembled to deal with the murders of two of Sweden's leading businessmen.

You can see familiar elements already: while Hjelm is not quite as depressive as the popular image of Scandinavian detectives dictates, he is serious, inward, and finds communicating a challenge. Most of the best Scandinavian detectives function within a team—which serves as a microcosm of the society and its ethos in which they function. In Hjelm's case, this microcosm is a sort of rainbow coalition: an almost equally serious woman; an aggressive body-builder, who once in roid-rage turned wife beater; a Finnish intellectual (which plays on some Swedish ethnic stereotypes); a plodding Norrlander called Norlander (which plays on others of the same) and a 'new Swede' of Latin American decent. What is particularly interesting is the way Dahl plays, within the group, on generational differences in traditional Swedish values—particularly racism, and not only in regard to immigration. Perceiving minute differences in their own native society, Swedes have been both open to immigration and felt swamped by it, and this is an important side issue throughout the novel.

Meanwhile, the hunt for the serial killer has a somewhat clockwork feel to it—there is actually an Agatha Christie reference which seems somewhat self-conscious. There are secret societies and a clue built around an obscure jazz tape, Monk recorded live, that would be worthy of Michael Connelly or John Harvey had they ever worked in that fashion. Slightly less self-conscious is the analysis Arto Soderstedt, the braniac left-wing Finn, presents of what makes serial killers in the first place. It's worth quoting: 

'Plenty of magazines in the United States make heroes out of serial killers and mass murderers. It's related to the fact that their society is on the verge of collapse. A widespread feeling of general frustration makes it possible for an entire nation to empathise with extremists and sick outsiders...their disregard for all social rules exerts a strong fascination...we need to ask ourselves what sort of effect this sort of mess could have on the national soul of the Swedish people. There's no such thing as a simple act.'

This resonates within the book's approach to Swedish society, if you go back to Beck the whole idea of serial killing hasn't occured, while in Wallander it is a particularly bizarre crime. But it's also crucial

that both Beck (in Murder At The Savoy, to which I wrote the introduction to the Harper Collins edition) and Henning Mankell's Wallander (in The Man Who Smiled) were brought face to face in confrontation with Sweden's upper crust businessmen—Hjelm faces the same challenges, made more intriguing because the businessmen themselves are the targets.

Hjelm reminds me a bit of Leif Persson's Lars Martin Johnsson (who is a Norrlander himself) in that he's not, as previously suggested, as depressive as a Beck or Wallander or Harry Hole. Hjelm is decent, relatively good with people, but, as with most good Nordic detectives, finds his real battles come within the bureaucracy he faces—and that, again, echoes the society the police are supposedly serving.

Hjelm's relationship with his wife Cilla, however, is pure Beck, though Dahl writes it with more emotion than Sjowall and Wahloo. Here's their marriage, and their lives, in a nutshell: 'Did those few moments in the kitchen draw them closer together? Or had the final chasm opened up between them? It was impossible to say, but something decisive had taken place; they had looked right into each other's naked loneliness.'

These are the things television would find hard to adapt. In some ways, I expected The Blinded Man would find its way to television—more along the lines of the Danish Those Who Kill. The ensemble playing can be managed, and the plot itself works well. As with all police procedurals, the question of reveals, and thus managing tension, becomes crucial. But what made the novel most interesting was the inward-looking part, as with the above, and that would be the hardest to transfer to the small screen. I found The Blinded Man a worthy, if unspectacular addition to the line of Scandinavian police procedurals, and Hjelm potentially a major figure. I will turn to the adaptation with keen interest.

The Blinded Man by Arne Dahl, translated by Tiina Nunnally
Vintage £7.99 ISBN 9780999575689 

Note: This review will also appear at Shots (www.shotsmag.co.uk)