Along with the four Henning Mankell books pictured here, all with a curiously similar cover design, I’ve bought four other Mankell novels, six Per Wahloo (and Maj Sjowall) novels, two Asa Larrson novels, five by Jo Nesbø, a couple of P.D. James books (one fiction, one non-fiction), a Patricia Highsmith classic, and a detective book by the 2014 Nobel Literature Prize winner: the French writer, Patrick Modiano.
Scandinavian crime landscapes
I haven’t read all the books yet. Nesbø has a cinematic and kinetic style, steeped in Hollywood. His anti-hero is dark, bitter, unlikeable. Mankell is more sedate, his main character morose but not as bitter and self-destructive as Nesbø’s Harry Hole. I’m still reading Asa Larrson, and don’t yet have a feel for her main characters yet. I know the Highsmith novel will annoy me, because the main character is a conman, a crook, a swindler. I haven’t read James in well over a decade, but I used to like her books. Wahloo and Sjowall come highly recommended, and I look forward to reading their books.
