Take a look at the picture of all these book titles. What do they have in common? First of all, they are all Nordic/Finnish/Icelandic whatever, they are all detective stories and the book jackets are all black and white and monochrome. Why?
OK we know that most people who live in the Scandinavian countries are gloomy and full angst and never laugh and never smile and all their policemen are guilt ridden/divorced/alcoholic/dreadful parents etc etc but we know that this cannot and is not true. Yet most books of this genre are marketed as such.
Have been reading and watching Wallander over the last few months and he is indeed a melancholy individual, yet now and then his life is shot with happiness, usually when he and Linda are talking and he realises that he loves his daughter and there is something and someone in his life. The Swedish TV version is downbeat, but is as nothing compared to the soul bearing and emotion wracked portrayal by Kenneth Branagh who does overdo it just a tad.
The Camilla Lackberg series, three so far and a new one out soon, are not quite so gloomy though there are some miserable souls portrayed in each title. At least this author has given us Patrik who is young and hopeful and has a partner and a child and seems happy. I hope it lasts and that something ghastly doesn't happen soon though as his partner's sister is in abusive relationship and seems to have offed her husband at the end of the last book, I don't hold out much hope.
Last week I was sent The Draining Lake by Arnuld Indridason and oh my goodness. Detective Erlundur is not only divorced, overweight and lives on his own, but his ex-wife hates him, his son is an alcoholic and his daughter is a drug addict totally out of control and who attacked one of his colleagues in the previous title in this series. I tell you this guy makes Wallander sound like a barrel of laughs. Anyway, I ploughed through it but rapidly lost the will to live and I will tell you why. It was the chat, the talk, the way everyone addressed each other. You think War and Peace is bad? 'Hello Alexi Alexovitch (or whatever) how are you today? This is my friend Pavlov Pavlovitch and his sister Anna Pavlovitskaya and their friends Ivan Ivanovich and Sergei Sergeivitch'. You get the drift.
Well The Drowning Lake is set in Iceland and a body is discovered in a lake and Erlunder Sveinsson is sent for from Jafnarfjordur. He arrives with his colleague, Elinborg (who is a woman and as well as being a detective has written a cookery book so we are told she is a cookery book writing detective...). They are then joined by Sigurdur Oli (this is the guy who was attacked by Erlunder Sveinsson's drug addict daughter by the way which all adds to the gaiety of the nation) and they don't call each other Fred or Jo or Lisa it is Hello Sirgurdur Oli - oh Hallo Erlunder Sveinsson and so forth.
Later on in the investigation Erlunder goes to interview a man called Haruldur who complains about a friend call Thordur. We are told that Haruldur likes to read poetry by Einar Benediktasson and so it goes on and on. I was awaiting the arrival of Gandalf, Gollum and Boromir any second.
Now please don't think I am poking fun at names and places of other countries, well suppose I am really, but am not doing it to be sarcastic or unpleasant in any way, but it just makes reading Nordic books slightly difficult. Once you get into them and you have sorted out the Isuldurs from the Egladurs then it is ok but for the first 50 pages of this book I hadn't the faintest idea what was going on. In fact, the book is so incredibly boring and badly written, IMHO anyway, that I skipped great chunks and read the last few chapters which had an ending which defied belief and I threw the book across the room.
So just to repeat, the nomenclature of these books is up to the reader to sort out and I have done this with no difficulty at all until I read the Icelandic title and came to a grinding halt. I think this is because it was dire more than anything else, if I had really been taken with it I would probably have found it easier.
My question is, no matter whether the detectives are English, American, Nordic, whatever, why are they such a miserable bunch of sods? The only two I can think of who marry and are happy, eventually, are Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane and Roderick Alleyn and Agatha Troy, though both of them took years to persuade their wives to marry them. Probably knew the misery that was in store...
I long to read a series, or watch a series, where we have a detective who is not (a) a maverick (b) embittered (c) an alcholic (d) divorced (e) a bad parent (f) unshaven and (g) rude and bad tempered which is not unexpected if you are suffering from (a) to (f).
A happy cheerful happily married contented run of the mill detective who solves crime with a smile on his lips and a song in his heart. Good idea?
No you 're right, it wouldn't work.
