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And the famous Nordic pragmatism is well-suited to the intricate mechanics of crime investigation plots. The crime novel, and particularly the British crime novel, has been enormously popular in Scandinavia for decades. There are a few reasons Scandinavian writers have taken to the genre. In terms of per capita incidence of violent crime, Mankell’s Ystad would rank behind Mosul but well ahead of Johannesburg and Mogadishu. Each of these crimes-and many, many more-is committed by a different killer and all within just three years.
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It has suffered, in the novels of Henning Mankell, the following horrors: the torture and execution of an elderly farmer and his wife ( Faceless Killers) the torture and execution of two men who are found floating off the coast in a life boat ( The Dogs of Riga) the impalement of a retired bird-watcher on sharpened bamboo poles ( The Fifth Woman) and the self-immolation of a teenage girl ( Sidetracked). Take, for instance, Ystad, population 17,000, a quaint fishing village on Sweden’s southern shore best known for its high-speed ferry terminal. The situation is even worse at the local level. In Oslo, a serial killer slips red diamond pentagrams under the eyelids of his victims (Jo Nesbø’s The Devil’s Star), while in Stockholm a stalker terrorizes young girls in public parks (Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s The Man on the Balcony).
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The capitals are seething hot pots of murder. Having read close to 30 Scandinavian crime novels over the last several months, I can come to only one conclusion: Scandinavia is a bleak, ungodly, extraordinarily violent place to live.