PERNILLE RYGGIn Rygg’s atmos-
pheric yet delightfully offbeat
thrillers, a young scientist be-
comes an amateur sleuth after
the unexpected death of her
father. MUST READ“The Butter-
fly Effect”
GUNNAR STAALESENStaalesen
isn’t very well known in this
country, which is a shame, since
his series, starring the hard-
boiled Bergen detective Varg
Veum (whose name in Old Norse
means “the outlaw”), is as sear-
ing and gripping as they come.
MUST READ“Wolves at the Door”Sweden
KARIN ALVTEGENA personal
tragedy led Alvtegen — the
great-niece of Astrid Lindgren, of
“Pippi Longstocking” fame — to
pick up a pen for the first time.
(“Finding the ability to write felt
similar to have suddenly discov-
ered a secret room in which I had
never been before,” she has
said.) MUST READ“Missing”
ARNE DAHLJan Arnald, a
Swedish literary critic and nov-
elist, writes the grisly but blackly
comic Intercrime novels — about
a team of Swedish investigators
— under the name Arne Dahl.
MUST READ“Misterioso”HENNING MANKELLOutside of
Larsson, Mankell is probably
Sweden’s best-known crime
novelist; his philosophical police
procedurals feature Kurt Wallan-
der, a homicide detective given to
brooding about the decline of
Western civilization. MUST READ
“Faceless Killers”
HAKAN NESSERHis novels, set in
a made-up country with a
vaguely Swedish coastline, fea-
ture a cerebral chief inspector
given to brooding on abstract
concepts of good and evil while
solving un-Swedish crimes like
ax murders. MUST READ“Bork-
mann’s Point”
ROSLUND & HELLSTROMAnders
Roslund and Borge Hellstrom,
the authors behind this pen
name, have a knack for trans-
forming social scourges into taut,
gritty thrillers. MUST READ“Box
21”
EMELIE SCHEPPIn her trilogy
about an aloof and unlikable
public prosecutor with a hidden
past, Schepp takes on such
thorny issues as class prejudice,
exploitation and broken trust.
MUST READ“Marked for Life”
MAJ SJOWALL AND PER WAHLOO
Their widely translated police
procedurals, about a dedicated
cop named Martin Beck, intro-
duced an international reader-
ship to the progressive socialism
of Swedish society in the 1960s
and ’70s. MUST READ“The
Laughing Policeman”
JOHAN THEORINTheorin, a jour-
nalist and author, improvises on
the traditional recipe for Nordic
thrillers by adding generous
sprinklings of folklore and the
supernatural. MUST READ“Ech-
oes From the Dead”
HELENE TURSTENWhen it comes
to Scandinavian fiction, as
Tursten shows, the women can
be every bit as bloodthirsty as
the men. MUST READ“An Elderly
Lady Is Up to No Good” 0Norway
SAMUEL BJORKBooks by Bjork —
the pen name of the Norwegian
novelist, playwright and singer-
songwriter Frode Sander Oien —
check all the Scandinavian noir
boxes. The real pleasure comes
from deciphering their plots,
which are as deviously tricky as
a 500-piece puzzle. MUST READ
“I’m Traveling Alone”
THOMAS ENGERIn his series,
Enger follows the high-octane
exploits of an investigative jour-
nalist named Henning Juul, who
gets involved in some of the best
chase scenes ever written. MUST
READ“Burned”
KARIN FOSSUMFossum writes
grim suspense novels on abnor-
mal-psychology themes, but in a
perversely delicate style that
brings Ruth Rendell to mind.
MUST READ“Black Seconds”
ANNE HOLTThis author and for-
mer minister of justice — best
known for procedurals that are
written with an easy, unforced
style — has created one of the
genre’s most memorable detec-
tives, a prickly police officer
named Hanne Willhelmsen.
MUST READ“1222”
JORN LIER HORSTHorst, a former
Norwegian police detective, is
often compared to Sweden’s
Henning Mankell for his moody,
sweeping crime dramas. MUST
READ“Closed for Winter”
JO NESBOThe best-known novels
from this Norwegian rock star-
turned-crime writer feature
Harry Hole, a macho homicide
cop in perennial pursuit of foam-
ing-at-the-mouth psychopaths.
MUST READ“The Redbreast”
M.T. EDVARDSSONBest known as
a Y.A. author in Sweden, Ed-
vardsson has had only one book
translated into English: “A
Nearly Normal Family,” the story
of an 18-year-old girl who’s been
accused of murder. MUST READ
“A Nearly Normal Family”
KERSTIN EKMANIn Ekman’s
powerful, evocative novels, the
brooding landscapes become
characters in their own right.
MUST READ“Blackwater”KJELL ERIKSSONWhile Scandina-
vian thriller writers are famously
unemotional, Eriksson’s police
procedurals demonstrate ex-
traordinary compassion for those
caught up in serious crimes.
MUST READ“The Cruel Stars of
the Night”
CAMILLA GREBEThough she
sometimes teams up with her
sister Asa Traff to write novels,
Grebe’s best books — the slow-
burn ones starring the profiler
Hanne Lagerlind-Schon — are
her own. MUST READ“After She’s
Gone”
LARS KEPLERThe husband-and-
wife team behind Kepler — Alex-
andra Coelho Ahndoril and Alex-
ander Ahndoril — has a taste for
the macabre and a surefire reci-
pe for the lurid serial-killer
thriller. MUST READ“The Sand-
man”
JENS LAPIDUSHis Stockholm
Trilogy is a good old-fashioned
gangster story about the godfa-
thers of Sweden’s criminal un-
derworld. MUST READ“Easy
Money”
STIEG LARSSONHe sparked the
craze for Scandinavian mystery
with “The Girl With the Dragon
Tattoo,” and his political paranoia
and sadomasochistic sensibilities
continue to influence the genre.
MUST READ“The Girl With the
Dragon Tattoo”THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 15