THE GIRL WHO TAKES AN EYE FOR AN EYE: MORE MILLENNIUM

This is David Lagercrantz's second novel continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, and I like it better than its predecessor The Girl In The Spider's Web. Titling is not always a strong point in the series, however, and title of the present volume is every bit as clunky as The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest.

I thought Spider's Web was interesting primarily in the way it seemed to try to transform Lisbeth Salander's much commented-on status as an anti-heroine into something more like an action hero. In that sense, it was closest in feel to The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second of Larsson's books, which had her as the almost lone protagonist, seeking her revenge on her father. That worked because it made such a change from the almost classical whodunnit structure of Dragon Tattoo, just as the third novel, Hornet's Nest, restored Mikael Blomkvist to the lead, while Salander lay in hospital, until the courtroom drama which is the climax.

Lagercrantz seems to have gone back consciously to the formula of the first volume, in which Blomqvist is an investigative journalist, and the third, because for much of this one Salander is in prison, getting her chance to kick ass in that environment, with both fellow prisoners and with the warden. It's a weakness of male authority figures. It's also an awkward kind of mix, but just like the template of Dragon Tattoo, the story is linked to the past of a very wealthy family and to a disappearing child. These tropes come on top of the continuing ones about siblings—Salander's sister who's now her arch-enemy/rival, and about secret government programmes designed, it would seem, specifically to ensure Salander gets abused in the interests of national security. In this case the programme is one about twins, which means the main story and Salander's again overlap.

We know that Larsson intended the Millennium series to extend to ten volumes, like Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Beck, and we can almost see Lagercrantz plotting out the links, overlaps and connections which can see Blomkvist and Salander drawn in. And we know Larsson, like many other Swedish writers, was concerned with government abuse of police powers, and the creation of an over-watching secret state, so we can also see how the sketching out of that template can keep the story moving. The problem is that all of this, to five volumes, occurs predominantly as either backstory or the working out of backstory, and backstory on a grand scale as well as one involving Salander.

Lagercrantz can write better than Larsson, but he sometimes doesn't seem to have the knack for narrative drive—these can be separate things, as anyone who follows along voraciously say, a John Grisham story, even when the writing often jars, can attest. Lagercrantz has the habit of re-introducing characters, even main characters, constantly—explaining who they are and what they do, as if he were influenced by English critics whose main response to Scandinavian crime is to marvel at how difficult the names are to pronounce. It's like getting constant footnotes instead of the usual dramatis personae in the front pages of a Russian novel.

But in the end, he gets the story to pay off, and it has a marvelous coda which is pure Salander, though a side of her we've never seen on the page before; it alone was worth the path through the novel, though that was never a problem in the first place.

The Girl Who Takes An Eye For An Eye

by David Lagercrantz

Maclehose Press, 2017 £20.00 ISBN 9780857056405

ANDREAS NORMAN RUSHES INTO A RAGING BLAZE

Politics often plays a huge part in Swedish thriller writing, but usually it's the politics of the past. Stieg Larsson's trilogy moved from who-dun-it to chase thriller before moving into politics in its third volume (The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest), which centered, in the end, around the assassination of Olaf Palme, and the idea of elements of the Swedish state working against its elected government. This trope recurs constantly; in Henning Mankell's final Wallander novel, The Troubled Man, the crime goes back to relations with allies, and subterfuge (literally) concerning the crisis of submarines caught in the Stockholm archipelago.

So it is no surprise that Andreas Norman's first novel should take up those themes, of the state within a state and the abuse of Swedish trust by allies. What is new and surprising is the way he does it, in the present day context of the war on terror, and Sweden as a part of the European Union.

Carina Dymek works in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She's a career-minded, unexciting, dare we say boring, prototype Swede. On a trip to Brussels, after a meeting of the EU's committee on security, she is approached by stranger who claims to be an EU civil servant, and who hands her a memory stick. On it is a proposal for a unified EU security service, one which would have the right to spy on suspected terrorists in any EU state, and share such spying with EU allies, like the US.

Being a good civil servant, she immediately turns the stick over to her superiors back in Stockholm. And quickly finds herself suspended from her job, and being invetsigated as a potential terrorist. To make things worse, Carina has a boyfriend, a fellow civil servant called Jamal, born in Egypt, and within hours MI6 is in Stockholm, saying Jamal is a terrorist, and Dymek is part of a major terror plot to strike against the EU in Brussels. The Swedes assign one of their toughest agents, Bente Jensen to the case, and she soon discovers there is more going on than she, and her department, are being told.

There is a lot that is familiar from novels of paranoid conspiracy in Into A Raging Blaze, but what makes it work so well is Norman's familiarity with the milieu; he worked in the Swedish foreign ministry, and he is very good at conveying that sense of humdrum bureaucratic inevitability about the progress of this case. The novel starts slowly, but gradually gathers momentum as Dymek, in effect, goes on the run. There's a little of the deus ex machina of Larsson's trilogy; skilled hackers seem not only thick on the ground in Sweden but also remarkably accessible—after all it is a small country so everybody knows one. The story is forced to resolve itself somewhat mechanically—but not until Dyke herself has been rendered; a nice touch as Sweden's putative allies turn out to be taking liberties with Swedish liberties...this is the other subtext of much of Swedish political thriller writing, a sense of naivete, a willingness by sections of the democratic society to throw ideals away for a chance to play with the big boys.

What also helps this novel work well are the two main characters, both women, whose contrasts are evident, but whose similarities, while more subtle, are even more telling. If we think of Swedish society as being, in theory, fair and rational, it's interesting how it is left to the women in the tale to display those characteristics, and for the men to be the ones duped.

Because what is most chilling, and realistic in the wake of what the world now knows about the NSA and GCHQ and their massive spying on their citizenries and on those of putative allies, is that when an intelligence organisation chooses not to believe in something, facts don't matter. And Norman does a brilliant job of putting that idea into context by using a book of Arabic poetry send to Jamal by his uncle, whom MI6 are claiming is a terrorist. The idea of MI6 as literary critics is both amusing and frightening.

As with most thrillers of paranoia, unless the ending be tragic, it tends to be a little forced. But here there is a realistic element of unhappy resolution, enough to suggest that the abuses will continue and any checking will be only temporary. In the meantime, this thriller starts slowly, builds nicely, and manages to do a good job of putting the reader into the mind of the character whose position is rendered almost hopeless by the security state. An impressive debut.

Into A Raging Blaze by Andreas Norman

translated from the Swedish by Ian Giles

Quercus £12.99 ISBN 9781782066033

note: this review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

JO NESBO'S LEOPARD

The Leopard opens with Harry Hole in Hong Kong, losing himself after having triumphed over the Snowman, but having lost his love, Rakel, and her son Oleg in the process. But there's another serial killer on the prowl in Norway, and they need Harry back. The lure of the chase doesn't get Harry to return, but the impending death of his father does, and he heads back to Oslo to find himself caught in the middle of a battle for control of the investigation, between his boss Hagen, and the Kripos boss, Mikael Bellman. Meanwhile, the bodies keep turning up.

Jo Nesbo has pulled out all the stops for this one, though in some ways more is less. There are three continents, a chilling execution device, and an action-packed finale that almost screams out for film adaptation. If this is an opening, or widening, of Hole's appeal, it's a brave thing to do, because Nesbo is already being compared, inevitably, to Henning Mankell, and by setting parts of the book in Africa, and titling it The Leopard, he invites such comparisons (recall The Eye Of The Leopard). In fact, the Harry Hole who returns from Hong Kong, and must stay sober rather than lose himself completely is much closer to Wallander than the Hole of earlier books; less abrasive, more vulnerable, more sympathetic. There's also an element of homage to Thomas Harris here, not just with the arcane torture devices, but also as Hole goes back to the Snowman, and to Katrine Bratt, the brilliant but twisted cop from that book, to help him find this new killer.

But it's also uniquely Nesbo. The plot involves many aspects of rural Norway, and in effect offers two villains, but the most interesting battle is not between them and Hole but between Hole and Bellman, who is the most chilling of all the villains in the novel, even though (or perhaps because) he is a cop. As the labyrinthine plot moves forward, the chess game between Hole and Bellman proves in some ways more suspenseful and dangerous than the pursuit of the killer—the affinity between Harry and the killers he pursues is far closer than that to cops like Bellman.

This conflict brings out the most abrasive parts of the Hole who won so many followers originally, and they may be disappointed in a kinder, gentler Harry. Though, since Nesbo's now billed on the cover as 'the next Stieg Larsson' perhaps Harry needs to be as irresistible to women as Mikke Blomqvist? His relationship with Kaja Solnes, the cop sent to bring him back to Norway from Hong Kong, isn't totally convincing, but it does offer its own shadowy twists, and their last scene is an absolutely brilliant piece of writing. Which in the end is what it's all about, and though this is a typically long novel, Nesbo has the ability to keep complicated plot lines going, keep characters in conflict, deal with red herrings, and even in translation make it all feel immediate. He's not the next Stieg Larsson, though he deserves to be that successful, but he does have some of the same ability to convey a wider perspective on the Norwegian world. He's more like, as I suggested earlier, a cross between Mankell and Harris, though Hole is a character either would envy. And in the final scenes of The Leopard, I again thought of Thomas Harris, with a strange echo of Hannibal Lecter and new directions for the character. With Nesbo on top form, that's something to look forward to. It something the very seductive cover of the German edition suggests...

The Leopard by Jo Nesbo
Harvill Secker, £12.99, ISBN 978184655401

NOTE: This review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

THE REAL MIKKE BLOMKVIST? JAN GUILLOU'S ENEMY'S ENEMY: A Forgotten Friday Entry

For years, whenever I would discuss Henning Mankell or later Stieg Larsson with Swedish friends or relatives they inevitably would suggest I start reading Jan Guillou, whose series of spy novels featuring Swedish intellgience agent Carl Hamilton were the country's most popular books. I also think it was Guillou's back I saw after he'd exchanged a greeting with Henning Mankell when I was interviewing Mankell in the lobby of London's Savoy; Mankell pointed and said 'that's the second-best novelist in Sweden.'! I finally came across a copy of Enemy's Enemy, the fourth in the series, originally published in 1989 and in English in 1992. The novel's translation was credited to Thomas Keeland, who apparently was actually Tiina Nunnally and Steven Murray working jointly; Murray later would translate Stieg Larsson, and unhappy with the published reslt, use the pseudonym Reg Keeland.

What is fascinating, given the Swedish enthusiasm for Guillou, is the idea that he turns out to be a real-life Mikke Blomkvist. If you recall Larsson's Millennium trilogy, it begins with Blomkvist, a journalist for a small left-wing magazine, being sent to prison for libelling a major industrialist. Jan Guillou was one of three people (his co-writer and editor being the others) sent to prison in 1973 for espionage, after publishing a series of articles in their small left-wing magazine. Even more interestingly, given that the Millennium trilogy turns out to be about exposing a small, unknown group within Swedish intelligence which has had Lisbeth Salander committed to protect their secrecy, Guillou's expose was of something called the 'Information Bureau', which turned out to be a secret agency within Swedish intelligence which was spying domestically on Swedish citizens suspected of being communists, subversives, or other leftish undesirables.

There are more parallels in the work itself. Enemy's Enemy is a sophisticated work of spy fiction, more concerned with political reality than thriller action. Although Hamilton is often called the Swedish James Bond, this novel at least carries a sort of realism, un-romantic, matter-of-factly violent, which reminds me more of Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm, who is nominally of Swedish descent, and made me wonder if Hamilton's name was intended as some kind of hommage. The Helm books, if you don't recall, or only saw the Dean Martin movies, were very much in the Gold Medal mode, and Helm was the kind of efficient, everyday kind of killer one could appreciate working for a quasi-secret branch of intelligence. Guillou is also playful with his Swedish influences; there is a character in this book named Gunvald Larsson, who makes a point of disassociating himself from Martin Beck's colleague; there is also a character named Stig Larsson, which could be a name-check for the Stig who caused the big Stieg to add the 'e' to his name, but would be very prescient otherwise, as Stieg was still writing for small magazines in 1989.

Enemy's Enemy pits Hamilton against his fellow Swedish agencies as much as against the Russians, and eventually unites the ostensibly neutral Swedes with their Red enemies (there is much reference to a previous Swedish operation against Russian submarine intelligence in Swedish waters) chasing a turned mole. Guillou is excellent at Hamilton's time in Moscow, which rings true from my (admittedly non-spying but journalistic or business) experience in the city. He also plays the relationship between Hamilton and the Russians brilliantly, even skipping the chance for one final twist which would have made it a different story entirely, and may have been a more realistic, if less happy, ending.

But the tour de force of the book is an extended courtroom scene, just as it is in the third of the Millennium trilogy. Here Hamilton faces down a parliamentary committee, transforming himself from suspected abuser of Swedish democracy and human rights world-wide, to national hero. Guillou handles it extremely well, shifting the tension and the equilibrium between politicians and spies brilliantly. As I said, the focus of the novel is indeed politics, and this not only resolves much of the book's action, but reinforces and explains its reason for being.

As far as I can tell Enemy's Enemy is the only Hamilton novel translated into English; not even the first, Coq Rouge, appears anywhere. Guillou is in print in English with a trilogy of novels set in the Crusades, which is interesting because part of Enemy's Enemy is set in Beirut. I've picked them up, and will look at them sometime soon, because Guillou is the real deal. I just hope they did well enough, or the Mankell/Larsson phenomenon is strong enough, to get more Carl Hamilton novels into English print.

Enemy's Enemy by Jan Guillou (translated by Thomas Keeland)
Bloomsbury 1993, £10.99 paper, ISBN 0747515778
The Crusades trilogy, translated by Steven Murray,
published in paperback by Harper

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

On Tuesday's BBC World Service programme The Strand, I discussed The Girl Who Played With Fire, which was released in Britain yesterday. You can hear that on BBC I Player here, for a couple of more days, it's the lead item in the running order. Here's a fuller take on the film:

The second Swedish film adapted from Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels is very different from the first, a more complicated yet less layered movie, with a number of impressive set-pieces and an even more impressive performance by Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander. More complicated but less layered may sound an oxymoron, so let me explain.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was scripted by a pair of extremely talented Danish feature film makers, Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, and directed by another Dane, Niels Arden Oplev. They trimmed down the book considerably, particularly cutting back on Mikke Blomqvist's romances, to focus on his relationship with Lisbeth Salander. This had the effect of simplifying the story, making it more of a thriller, but it worked and kept a huge book manageable on film. When I saw the preview of that film, John Landis was sitting by me, and afterwards he exclaimed 'it's like an episode of Columbo', which says as much about his sensitivity to nuance as to plot arc, but in a way he was right. Take away the stuff about Swedish society, Nazi connections, abuse of women, and serial killers and it is more like a Columbo plot, though it was made so well, shot so subtly, it was hard to make the connection visually.

But The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second installment of the trilogy, allows that sort of connection to be made more easily. The films are being shot with Swedish and German television in mind, and this one was made by a director (Daniel Alfredsson) who, though he has made features, was also head of drama at SVT as well as a proflific and good television director, and scripted by Jonas Frykberg, whose career has mainly been in TV. This is not a question of quality as much as scale; this film seems scaled far more for the small screen than the first one. On The Strand I used the example of advocat Bjurman's summer house, where he has hidden Salander's files. Both times we see it, although the viewer should know what it is, Alfredsson makes sure to pull back to show the mailbox at the entrance to the driveway, the kind of establishing shorthand we expect on TV.

But the real difference between the two films is in the scripting, because this one remains very faithful to the novel, which has good and bad points. The bad is that, as with the first volume, the book is very densely plotted, and its characters are given lots of back story and time to develop. The result is that a number of times in this film, the characters have to explain things to each other, that is, to us, the audience. Certain interesting characters, like the detective Bublanski, or Salander's old boss Armanskij, don't get a chance to be developed here, while others, like Blomkvist's sister, are introduced with no explanation (we see her Italian in-laws, but don't learn she's a leading criminal lawyer--that presumably has been left for the third installment). There is also more romance in this one, we not only get a somewhat gratuitous but otherwise rewarding lesbian love scene with Rapace and Yasmin Garbi, but we see Blomkvist's relationship with his editor, Erika, not only when they are in bed but when he tells his in-laws he's in love with a married woman. That the excellent Lena Endre gets more space as Erika is another positive, though her role seems to be much like hers in the Swedish Wallander series, to act as a brake on the main male character. Interestingly, both she and Michael Nykvist are a bit older than the book's characters; Nykvist's Blomkvist is played with belly extended to make the point he's not a natural ladies' man.

There is also space for Per Oscarsson to deliver a fine performance as the stroke-ridden Palmgren, Salander's original guardian, and Peter Andersson is suitably slimy as Bjurman. Paolo Roberto, playing himself, is quite good, though I'm not sure we actually needed a car chase, except to re-establish this as a TV movie, but the difficulty with the character of Niederman, with his inability to feel pain, makes it difficult, and Micke Spreitz with his dyed hair reminded me of Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love (which, interestingly, is also the title of Mia's book about the imported sex trade), if not Ivan Drago from Rocky whatever number it was.

It is also odd how small anomalies stand out in the continuity. I didn't go back to the book to check, but did Miriam Wu really carry Salander's birthday present around in her purse for a full
year on the off-chance she might show up again? When Salander beats up the two motorcycle gang guys, and rides off on one of their bikes, where did she find a helmet that fits her? Neither biker wore one, nor were they carrying one (though I seem to recall in the book they might have been for a girlfriend). And a plot revolving around a key dropped by a woman who makes few mistakes of panic does stretch things a bit.

Those who have read the books will find this film touches all the bases. For those who haven't, it may be a bit hard to follow, but many of them will be presumed to have seen the first installment, which would make things a bit easier. But the selling point of this second film is Noomi Rapace. The scene where she dons face paint to frighten the journalist who's been linked to the sex trade is a bravura set-piece for her, and, much as the first film was Blomkvist's, with Salander coming to the rescue, this one is hers, with Blomkvist doing the same. That they play only one scene together makes that point even clearer.

The Girl Who Played With Fire is very good television, and it's an entertaining film, if not as impressive as its predecessor. And though Rooney Mara may come from American football royalty (her father's family owns the New York Giants and her mother's the Pittsburgh Steelers) she will have her work cut out trying to match Noomi Rapace's performance. I'll suggest my take on what the American version may be like sometime in the future (hint: Daniel Craig doesn't write for a small left-wing magazine, but for the Wall Street Journal).

STIEG LARSSON IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

A very interesting piece by Charles McGrath, formerly editor of the New Times Book Review, in today's paper (you will find it here) about Stieg Larsson and the fight between his partner and his family over the estate. What jumps out is that McGrath says a substantial portion of a fourth novel exists on a disc in Larsson's computer. But at a panel discussion in London, his publisher implied that there were only notes and a outline, and very little actual text. There's also more discussion about the shortcomings of the first translation...

STIEG LARSSON'S GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST

Although Stieg Larsson's Millenium series was projected for ten books (like Maj Sjowall's and Per Wahloo's Martin Beck series) this, the third and final novel which he turned in to his publishers, actually completes a very coherent and self-contained trilogy, as the battle between Lisbeth Salander and her oppressors, powerful men in Swedish society, reaches a courtroom climax. In a sense, that climax defines this novel: where the first two books involved quite a bit of action (the first using the familiar story of finding the bad apple in the family in a new and interesting way, the second pitting Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist against her immediate tormentors) the default setting for this book is the conference room. Even the trial takes place around a table, rather than a Perry Mason-style courtroom setting, but I cannot think of a crime novel which proceeds from one meeting to another quite the way this one does--the Millenium magazine editorial staff; the villains in the secret section with Sapo, the state security police; the editorial staff and the board of SMP, the paper Ericka Berger leaves Millenium to edit; the police; the government, and so on.

The cumulative effect of all these meetings is an awful lot of exposition, not just of the plot but also of the history of the Swedish security state. That Larsson manages to make the suspense riveting in the face of such iintense backgrounding is a tribute to the story. But this will not suit the tastes of all readers, even those who have enjoyed the previous two volumes, and certainly it would not be a good place to begin. But if you're a fan of conspiracy novels you're likely to enjoy it, particularly as you see all these good stories which no one has (yet) bothered to fictionalise. It is a tribute to Larsson that he manages to make the story as gripping as he does, because what he does is manipulate groups, rather than people, through this plot. I compared him in an earlier essay (you can link to it here) to Alexandre Dumas, but here the model I have in mind is more like Richard North Patterson, or Michael Crichton, where the thriller plot revolves around an issue, and a lot of explication is required, and indeed, becomes part of the plot. Thus Salander herself can spend most of the book offstage, as it were, in a hospital bed from which she manipulates her hackers.

Oddly, what makes the novel work is the group of villains. The beauty of the plot is that he keeps them, seemingly, one step ahead of his heroes, even when we know that they cannot be. There still seems to be an inevitability that they, with their power and secrecy, will triumph. Thus when the most pompous and seld-assured of them is brought down to size, there is a palpable feeling of success. Perhaps the weakest part of the story is the assumption that there are enough decent, honest Swedes, not just in the police, but also in the government, in the secret police itself, and in the judiciary, to let the heroes triumph. This seems a strangely Swedish conceit: after all, Larsson's balances his nobel journalist heroes with any number of lazy or corrupt ones. It seems about as likely as so many women finding Blomkvist irresisitible! Blomkvist's fatal attraction to so many women is beginning to wear thin; although his new squeeze is interesting, one can see Larsson perhaps thinking ahead. I mistakenly felt a number of characters, and even settings, introduced in the second novel would appear again here. They don't but one gets the sense that Larsson was playing the long game, for the ten-book set. For example, the character of Linder, from Milton Security, would seem primed for a bigger role the next time Millenium, or Berger, got into trouble.

Thus the lack of focus, the relatively smaller roles for Blomkvist and Salander are not that surprising. In a sort of coda that seems almost rushed at the end, Salander returns to action, but it is interesting that silence is always her strongest point, and her character can grow in depth while saying nothing. In fact, Salander reminds me that Sweden has recently produced a couple of key works in the modern vampire cycle, and she would not be out of place in either Frostbitten or Let The Right One In. Still, she creates an anomaly of sorts. As Blomkvist himself explains, 'the story is not primarily about spies and secret agencies: its about violence against women and the men who enable it'. But that's not quite true.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was called, in Swedish, Men Who Hate Women, and it was a novel about just that, including the men who hate Salander, who are counterpointed to the serial killer (who turns out to be carrying on a family tradition of abuse that includes both girls and boys). The parallel storylines, reflecting each other, are what makes this is the strongest of the series. The Girl Who Played With Fire is focused much more on Salander's own revenges. But the Swedish title for this third volume was, as best I can translate it, Castles In The Air Exploded. To me this suggests the crumbling of the ideals of Swedish society, and the English title suggests striking against the stings of society, not just the males who abuse women. Thus Larsson's title signifies the nature of this novel better than Blomkvist's PC explanation--it is above all a conspiracy fiction, and it will be a conspiracy film when it is finally brought to the screen. I enjoyed it, but I felt a let-down after the first two, and that let-down wasn't helped, as I said, by the action-filled coda, clever though it was. Still, when one plows through a 600 page novel, one does it for a reason. And now, with nowhere left for Millenium to go, we can only mourn, one last time, Larsson's passing.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest
by Stieg Larsson
Maclehose Press/Quercus£18.99 ISBN 9781906694166
.
NOTE: This review will also appear at www.crimetime.co.uk

TALKING EURO CRIME FICTION ON RADIO 3'S NIGHT WAVES

In case you missed my contribution to the crime discussion on tonight's Night Waves (BBC Radio 3) you can pound this link and hear the programme again. My part follows the interview with PD James, which is very interesting: although she wouldn't define her work as cozy, she does talk repeatedly about feelings of comfort and safety in the way she writes crime.

At the end of our discussion of European crime, where Philip Dodd asks Shelly about social democratic political correctness I was sitting there poised to say 'that's why there are so many depressive detectives in the Nordic countries'. But I didn't get a chance!

I was pleased, however, to be able to draw a link between the contexts of Wallander and Stieg Larsson's novels, in that the real villains in both tend to be people who abuse the responsibility they've been given by society, moreso than simple 'criminals'. And to discuss Hakan Nesser in the context of the strange, Euro-melange, setting of his novels. The first EU crime fiction?

MILLENNIUM, JULIA CHILD, JANE JACOBS, HENRY PORTER AND HARLEY GRANVILLE-BARKER

I was catching up with some papers on the flight to the US Wednesday, and was chuffed to see the Observer's house neo-con Nick Cohen quoting Mario Vargas Llosa's article in El Pais about the Millennium trilogy: Vargas Llosa compared them to the same sense of 'feverish excitement' he'd experienced reading 'Dumas Dickens and Hugo as a boy, those stories about what he called 'just avengers'. I couldn't agree more, in fact, Cohen could have found the same take on Stieg Larsson right here, among Irresistible Targets' Bullseyes!

The Observer comment section also included an excellent essay by the definitely non neo-con Henry Porter, arguing for a repeal of all the laws passed during the last 12 years of Blairite government aimed at eroding civil liberties and creating a security state in the UK. He fails to note that on any number of these restrictions, this government has introduced tests, or vetting, which need to be paid for: the citizen as consumer, the subject as profit centre. There is a definite feudal element to this, beyond the obvious apparatchik revival brought on by a government 'socialist' only in the most cynically Stalinist sense of the word.

I then found myself a bit baffled by Philip French's Observer review of Julie & Julia, where he complained the film gave no mention to Elizabeth David, who was writing French cookbooks for the English before Julia Child was doing her TV thing for Americans. Huh? Do we need to check other countries too, to see if they had anyone promoting French cooking? Philip French thought this was as bad as Tom Hanks 'storming up Omaha Beach on D-Day in Saving Private Ryan, and no mention being made of the British Second Army coming ashore on Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches. Unlikely as it might have been for the Yanks getting slaughtered at Omaha to wonder for the cameras about how Monty's chaps were faring at the somewhat easier beaches to the east, I should point out that for someone being hypercritical about historical accuracy it's rather churlish to forget that the toughest of those three beaches, Juno, was taken by the Canadian Third Division (although it was part of the British Second Army, Canadians are actually not British, and despite Juno's casualties being the second-highest, after Omaha's, the Canadians actually penetrated the farthest off the beaches on the first day).

But the prize for churlishness went to a review by Christopher Turner, in the previous day's Guardian, of Anthony Flint's Wrestling With Moses, a book about Jane Jacobs' battles with Robert Moses which are the background to her classic book on urban planning, The Death And Life Of Great American Cities. In that book Jacobs described the ideal urban environment, which turned out to be exactly the kind of neighbourhood she was living in in Greenwich Village, which was threatened by Moses' plans to extend Park Avenue south through Washington Square Park, and turn Houston Street into a 10 lane expressway to connect the Hudson and East River crossings.

Turner somehow transmutes this into a battle between Jacobs' crowded urban mess and Moses' wide-open spaces. As it happens, I saw my birthplace, New Haven, lose whole neighbourhoods to exactly that sort of road-building (see Murder In The Model City, by Paul Bass and Douglas Rae), and those lost neighbourhoods were re-developed into exactly the sort of urban wastelands Jacobs feared. Yes, she broke the ground for gentrification which has turned the Village into the kind of place the people who made it interesting can no longer afford, but at least you can still walk through it. And by the way, it would be easier to take Turner seriously if he knew that the classic biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, was written by Robert Caro, not Anthony Caro.

There was also a nice little appreciation in that Guardian of Harley Granville-Barker, a much under-appreciated playwright, written by Richard Eyre. I noticed that he described Barker's wife as 'an American millionairess'. How this got past the Guardian's eagle-eyed sub-editors I do not know, as they insist on changing the word 'actress' to 'actor' whenever anyone else uses it, despite whatever confusion that may cause, as when I wrote of porn-director Gerard Damiano saying his experience as a hair-dresser helped him deal with actresses. As I wrote here, the subs changing that to 'actors' rather changed its meaning.

The Guardian insists on a gender neutral word for performers, but not for the very wealthy. They will not use a gender neutral word like 'spouse' to avoid 'husband' and 'wife', nor will they use 'homosexual' or 'gay' in most instances; instead they insist on gender-specific, not neutral, reference as 'gay and lesbian'. I'm sure you can think of other anomalies; that 'millionairess' leapt out at me means either it's a silly proscription or I am a rather sad and pedantic fellow. Probably both.

SWEDISH CRIME DOMINATES EURO BEST-SELLER LISTS

There was an interesting piece in the Guardian yesterday (here) about the top-selling authors of fiction in seven leading European book makets. The survey was done by Rudiger Wischenbart and Miha Kovac, based on trade magazines in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands; you can find their fascinating Booklab blog here. From there you can also link to their original findings, which make far more interesting reading that the Guardian's potted summary.

Although the Guardian bills it as a 'diverse reading culture across Europe', the authors' own blog points out more accurately that none of the writers in their top 40 come from outside Western Europe (apart from Paulo Coehlo, 'Brazilian Portuguese'). Although Wischenbart told the Guardian you 'might have expected as many as 80% of the best-sellers to have been written in English', 13 of 40 still amounts to 1/3, though you'd have to agree that 2/3 of western Europe's best-sellers being non-English language is impressive.

Of course eight Swedes, from a country of only eight million people, is even more impressive, with four from the Netherlands following suit. Although Stieg Larsson was number one in five of the seven countries (based on chart position and length of stay factored together), Henning Mankell at 10 was the next highest placed Swede, while five English-language authors placed in the top 10: Khaled Hosseini (2), Ken Follet (4), John Boyne (7), Ceceila Ahern (8) and Elizabeth Gilbert (9). Of course, two of those are Irish, one American, and one Afghan-born, which lessens slightly any English national triumphalism.

The list is limited to 'adult' fiction, so Stephenie Meyer, who would place second overall, is excluded, as is JK Rowling. Both have multiple titles included in their totals, which is another problem when trying to compare like against like. I had thought Boyne's The Boy In Striped Pyjamas, was originally done as a young adult title, but became 'adult' as a result of the movie tie-in. Movies also boosted Ahern, for example, when PS I Love You came out. One other anomaly: Robert Saviano's Gomarra, obviously boosted by its movie tie-in, was marketed in some countries as fiction and others as non-fiction, and it's unclear from the chart and its notes whether it was thus excluded or included.

The other Swedes included Lisa Marklund (12--and she's going to be collaborating with James Patterson), Jan Guillot (15-- interestingly, Guillot's books, while wildy popular in Germany, haven't made much impression in English markets), and Jens Lapidus (17-- whose 'Stockholm Noir' trilogy, first volume titled Never Fuck Up, has yet to be published in English). Johan Theorin and Asa Larsson also make the list, along with Mark Levengood, an American-born Swedish-speaking Finn whose fame came via the Eurovision song contest and whose book, I assume, is non-crime.

I'm surprised at the paucity of American writers included. Apart from Gilbert, the only others were Patricia Cornwell, Patterson, and Mary Higgins Clark, all of whom placed in the 40s. Also down in that territory were England's Martina Cole and Nicci French, and the Indian/Australian Aravind Adiga. The top ten also includes Carlos Ruis Zafon, which may vindicate leaving the title of El juego del angelo in Spanish, and the German neo-feminist porno writer Charlotte Roche. And though I'm as encouraged as the Guardian by seeing Katie Price in close proximity to a French Nobel Prize winner, I question whether it's accurate of the paper to describe Price as 'an author writing in English', since she doesn't actually write her books at all.

STIEG LARSSON'S THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

Following on from my appearance on Open Book to discuss Scandinavian crime writers, as posted here, this review was written for Crime Time, and is already on its website, here.

This is the second of Larsson's posthumously-published epic Millennium trilogy, and near its end the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, while searching the secret apartment kept by Lisbeth Salander, the eponymous girl, realises that she was 'the woman who hated men who hated women'. This epiphany is actually a very specific reference, which would be recognised by Swedish readers, to the title of the trilogy's first book, but was lost when it was retitled in English as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The new title was admittedly more attractive, and the best-selling success of the book certainly proved the point, but the reference was a sign of the fine balance which Larsson constructed between his two main characters, Blomkvist and Salander, and, more importantly, the way he constructed the trilogy, so concerns hinted at in the first book become magnified and play into both the plotting of the second, and into our understanding of Salander herself.

The book brings Salander to the fore. When it opens she has left Sweden, cutting herself off from Blomkvist, and despite her return home, albeit to an existence under all radar, the book turns quickly to Blomkvist's radical magazine Millennium. They have decided to publish an expose of Sweden's trafficking of young women, and the involvement of prominent Swedes in it. But when the journalist writing the piece, and his wife, whose doctoral dissertation has provided its core, are murdered, Salander becomes the prime suspect, in part because her legal guardian, and abuser, with whom she dealt in the first book, is killed with the same weapon. Salander becomes the object of a nationwide manhunt, and Blomkvist, trusting her innocence, begins his own investigation. Blomkvist's and Salander's stories remain separate; in fact, Blomkvist tells a good portion of the tale twice, from each character's point of view. Rather than being redundant, it is exceptionally effective, because there are always angles we cannot see where Salander is concerned, and we are just as befuddled as Blomkvist by her.

Larsson has created an interesting trope on the most popular style of Swedish crime books, that established by Sjowall and Wahloo's Martin Beck and taken on by Mankell's Wallender. These books are valued for their perceptions about Swedish society, and their depressive cops are always about to be overwhelmed by the seamy realities underneath what is supposed to be a state devised rationally for the benefit of all citizens. Larsson's Blomkvist is more of a Per Wahloo figure (as a left-wing journalist) than a Martin Beck; Blomkvist is a socially well-adjusted journalist committed to righting the wrongs he investigates within that society, where Salander is, on the surface, exactly the kind of person with whom Swedish society cannot cope. This novel reveals much of Salander's back-story, and with it the roots of her anti-social personality. But as the plot is uncovered, and we, the readers, get deeper into what she already knows but never tells, and what others are trying desperately to either uncover or keep hidden, we discover that not only has she been let down by those who should protect her, but that her abuse has been deliberate, and condoned by powerful forces who control the Swedish state. Thus Larsson raises the basic question, one which had become more and more important in this country, of the dangers of a 'welfare' state turning into a nanny state, especially when, rather than working for the benefit of its citizens, a nanny state is easily manipulated for the benefit of the powerful few, and their apparatchicks, who would prefer it morph into an Orwellian security state.

Not that Larsson is didactic, at least not about those bigger themes. He can be woefully obsessive about the details of people's meals, or grocery purchases (Billy's Pan Pizzas may signify something deeper than a dish in Swedish society, but I have no idea what, and I got tired very quickly of reading about them), or how they eat (we don't need to be told that a bottle cap is removed before beer is drunk from the bottle). At one point Lisbeth herself says 'what you were drinking isn't important', and you feel sometimes that, had Larsson lived, he might have done some copy editing which would make the book flow more swiftly. One character, a champion boxer, seems to be introduced primarily as a plot device, but seeing the expert way Larsson wove material from the first novel into this one, I'm confident he will play a better role in the final volume of the trilogy, and accordingly I am willing to allow him his occasional longeurs. I'm impressed with Larsson's skill at plotting: he reveals the killer's identity much sooner than expected, perhaps removing some of the story's razor-edged ambiguity, but he still manages to keep the suspense going. He also can reference small items, like Salander's mother, whose condition in the first book is explained in the second, which also suggested the books are better read in order. This one contains story-lines, and characters, not least Salander's twin sister, which will obviously be continued, and hopefully resolved, in the trilogy's final volume. They also include the novel's most chilling villain, a psychologist whose role is only minor, but who has been set up carefully for a fall.

The other key element of Scandinavian crime fiction is the isolated nature of individuals within the societies, the personal space which they give each other, and to which an intrusive government seems intrinsically contrary. Hidden pasts play a huge part of this story, as they often do in crime fiction, but there are also things which the characters are hiding from each other, like Blomkvist's publishing partner, and lover, who is taking a job with a newspaper but can't bring herself to tell him. The relationship of Salander and Blomkvist plays on that, with the roles reversed from what one's expectations might be, and Blomkvist's egalitarian modern man irritates Salander, who proves far more traditional in her feelings that even she would expect.

Although they are not a Swedish Nick and Nora Charles, indeed, Larsson can keep them apart for virtually an entire novel, these books are very much about the relationship between the two. But as the titles suggest, Larsson's key character, his unique creation, is Salander. In fact, it struck me part way through this volume, that Salander, with her manipulation of computers, her hidden resources, her mysterious networks, and her awareness of things her enemies don't believe she could know, and her desire to redress old wrongs done to her by corrupt authority, resembles a classic figure of literature: The Count Of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes. And with that realisation, I recognised that Larsson's omniscient narration, his changes of point of view, his pace, are all very much in the Dumas tradition. And that I read this novel, and its predecessor, with much the same enthusiasm and involvement as I did when I first encountered Monte Cristo as a boy. That is not something one can say about many classics of modern crime writing, but it's why I don't hesitate to think of it as a classic.

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
Maclehose Press/Quercus £16.99 ISBN 9781847245564

AN OPEN BOOK: DISCUSSING SCANDINAVIAN CRIME ON BBC RADIO FOUR

Sunday (11 Jan), I appeared on BBC Radio 4's programme Open Book, interviewed by host Mariella Frostrup (pictured right) about Scandinavian crime writers, in light of the BBC adaptations of Henning Mankell's Wallender stories, starring Kenneth Branagh (interesting choice, as Swedes tend to have lips, which Branagh doesn't--I'll write more about the shows when the DVD is released), and the publication of Stieg Larsson's Girl Who Played With Fire, and Yrsa Sigurdarsdottir's Last Rituals. You can find the programme online here.

It was a very busy show, so our ten minutes was edited down a bit, and the specific discussion of Larsson's book was what was lost, but we did pack in a lot of background on crime writing in the north, its roots in both British and American fiction, and the important influence of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Martin Beck novels. And Mariella managed to query about specific Norwegians, so Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbo got name-checks.

It's a good listen, and our discussion goes well with Granta editor John Freeman talking about US Presidents and their reading: I once sold a review of Stephen Hunter to the Telegraph based on Bill Clinton being pictured with the book as Air Force One arrived in Britain. JFK, of course, put the James Bond novels on the map (and probably thought his CIA was just like that until he learned better) but they never mentioned that Ike's favourite reading was Zane Grey.

And before you ask, no, that's not me in the photo with Mariella.