A few days ago I noticed that my husband was browsing different DVD stores online. My thought was, nice, we’ll get something new to watch. I was not quite prepared for the order’s size and I was shocked when I was met by a mountain of DVDs on the dining table. Even worse – we are apparently expecting another two packages from different stores…

Will Ferrell movies for him, a few mysteries for me (thank you!), selected box office hits and classics that were on sale. Now the question is — when are we supposed to have the time to watch all of them?

The Swedish movie Master Detective Lives Dangerously from 1957 is one of my all time favorites. The movie is based on Astrid Lindgrens book about the boy detective Kalle Blomkvist and she wrote the script as well. I really recommend it if you have not seen it yet. I do not even know how many times I have seen the movie.

War of the Roses

It is summer in Lillköping, Sweden, and Kalle, Anders and Eva-Lotta (The White Rose) battle against Sixten, Jonte and Benka (The Red Rose) in the war about a special stone. Their innocent game becomes serious when Eva-Lotta finds the old man Gren dead. She bumped into the killer right before that and she becomes the most important witness. It is not surprising that Master Detective Kalle Blomkvist ends up solving the murder mystery.

The Robber Language

The Robber Language was introduced in Astrid Lindgren’s books about Kalle Blomkvist, and The White Rose benefit from it in the movie. I am sure that I am not the only one who have used this code language as a child, or?

Stieg Larsson

Lisbeth Salander is based on Astrid Lindgrens Pippi Longstocking. Stieg Larsson also borrowed Kalle Blomkvist’s last name to the male main character of his books – Mikael Blomkvist – and in the Millenium books Swedish media sometimes nicknames him “Kalle”.

Original movie title in Swedish: Mästerdetektiven lever farligt

A woman decides to go for a bike ride on a Friday evening. She never returns and the police start a search which soon turns into a crime investigation

Access to the Same Information

We get to follow the investigation solely through short newspaper articles, police interrogations and interviews with suspects. It turns into a story about shadow characters where external attributes like what someone looks like or someone’s name is of less importance. We only find out about the involved people’s feelings to the extent they have chosen to share that in interrogations and interviews.

The tabloids’ angles and platitudes are long gone, instead we get to follow a tragedy with information of varying quality. It becomes a naked story in that the characters’ thoughts, vivid environmental descriptions and other things that usually are part of a novel are missing. It results in a realistic depiction of the tragedy’s reality, unlike the novels’ structured events and the tabloids’ doctored fabrications. The reader is given access to the same information as the investigators and when the involved people’s stories often differ it is easy to understand the police’s frustration when their work is disrupted.

The different narrative and the language appeal to me, and a lot is familiar from studies of verdicts and investigation protocols, which gives it an authentic feeling.

Original title in Swedish: Domslut

I had intended to write a complete review of this novel, but now that I have read it I feel that it will be difficult.

Is there no story? Yes, but it is difficult to identify it.

Is there no problem solver? Sure there is. An attorney named Póra Gudmundsdóttir, and her sidekick, her German admirer Matthew.

Are they not solving the crime? Wait a minute, that you will have to find out for yourself.

Imagine Harry Hole, Colombo and Tom Barnaby as snipers using pistols, in comparison Póra is the type who would use a machinegun. I get confused trying to follow the story. I cannot stand that the main character follows wild leads without even the slightest well-hidden common thread. Her meetings and conversations with suspects do not move the story forward.

The environmental descriptions are not done properly. I have been to the Iceland and visited some of the places where the novel take place and I do not even get a sense of presence.

The characters are so stereotypical, that I wonder if they could be caricatures, and if so, was that done on purpose?

Luckily we all have different taste in books, and to get a different view of Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, please read Veronica’s review of The Day is Dark.

And above all, read the novel and form your own opinion. But if I were you I would borrow it from the library…

I liked Ninni Schulman’s first novel The Girl with Snow in Her Hair, and her independent sequel, The Boy who Stopped Crying, was even better. I definitely want to read more crime novels by Ninni Schulman, another fabulous Swedish crime writer.

A Pyromaniac is Wreaking Havoc

A house is burned down and a woman dies during a thunderstorm in Hagfors, but it turns out it was arson, and not lightning that struck the house. A few days later two people die in arson, and it does not take long before a fourth person dies in the same way. Everyone in town is scared and the fire extinguishers are quickly sold out. Do the arsons have a connection? Will the police solve the case before even more people will lose their lives?

The Main Character

The main character, the local newspaper journalist Magdalena Hansson, returned to her hometown in the first book and she still lives there. She is put in hot air when she stumbles on clues that can lead to the pyromaniac. We also get to follow her private life, which is almost as eventful.

Somewhere in Sweden

The novel describes life in a small town in Sweden, and how difficult it can be to change people’s perception of you. It is also questioned whether it is safer in a small town, since bullying and loneliness can be just as difficult, if not more so there. I come from a small town and the town described in the book (Hagfors) could be any small town in Sweden (albeit with a different dialect).

Original title in Swedish: Pojken som slutade gråta

The Danish author duo Kaaberbøl & Friis have done it again!

Invisible Murders is the sequel to their first novel The Boy in the Suitcase, and it is just as terrifying and impossible to put down.

The main character and problem solver is once again the nurse Nina Borg, a strong character with an enormous social interest.

Nina is contacted by a friend, who is hiding illegal immigrants in an old car shop. Most of them are roms and many of them are very sick. Even though Nina as a nurse is doing everything she can to help the sick, she is met with anger and suspicion. What is going on? It must be something worse than illegal immigrants. Is it something that cannot see the light of day?

Nina assumes that the bad living conditions are the cause. She does not understand that something else is behind it until she becomes sick as well.

Could it have something to do with the teenage boy that is hidden beneath the floor?

Just like in their first novel, the authors have created wonderful characters. My imagination gets free reign. The environmental descriptions are vivid and masterfully created, which spices up an already awful story.

If I were to make a wish, it would be that the authors gave some more thought to the ending. It was remarkably thin and had a different tone and tempo than the rest of the novel. It was even lame. You can do better girls!

Original title in Danish: Et stille umærkeligt drab

World Book Night is an annual celebration designed to spread a love of reading and books, and it will be celebrated in the USA, UK and Ireland on April 23, 2012. Tens of thousands of givers will share the joy and love of reading with millions of non or light readers.

Want to participate as a volunteer book giver as part of World Book Night? Sign up at www.worldbooknight.org by February 1, 2012.

Best Novel

The Ranger by Ace Atkins

Gone by Mo Hayder

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

1222 by Anne Holt

Field Gray by Philip Kerr

Who do you think should win?

Complete list of categories and nominees

When we bought a new condo a year ago the builtin bookshelf was the deciding factor. We homestyled our old place before we sold it and we sorted our bookshelf according to color.

As a result our friends and family had many opinions on how a bookshelf should be sorted. And why not? It is not something to take lightly, so we asked ourselves some questions:

Should paperbacks be separated from hardcovers? Yes!

Should we separate fiction from non-fiction? Absolutely!

How should we sort the non-fiction? We selected a few categories: philosophy, autobiographies, geography, religion, IT, and law.

Should fictional genres be separated? No, it is too difficult to decide which genre a novel belongs to, plus we would not have that many books for some genres.

Is it ok that my Agatha Christie collection is kept together – with a mix of paperback and hardcover? Yes! (You would not dare to day no).

Here is the result. We are already outgrowing our bookshelf and we have had to stack the books behind each other.

We are not the only ones who have a passion for books and bookstorage. Just this past week I have come across several inspiring bookshelves. First, Sara showed me this link with incredibly beautiful bookshelves, and then Mattias from Piratförlaget (Swedish publisher) shared this link with living bookshelves.

It is clearly the Era of Bookshelves!

The well-known politician Christian Weber is a proponent of a national DNA registry, and as an example of how it will work he voluntarily gives a sample of his saliva in a TV show. It turns out that his DNA matches evidence from a ten-year-old case where a young girl was murdered. Christian denies the allegations and a day later he has disappeared without a trace. If he tells the truth, what has really happened?

Truth and Consequence

The novel is about responsibility and shows that all our decisions in life have consequences, sometimes very serious ones. But chance also turns out to be of great significance. The novel also brings up violence and threats against women, and the guilt a mother has to live with when she has brought a violent man into her child’s life.

Interesting Intrigue

Current events are mixed up with Christian’s flashbacks and the murdered girl’s mother’s flashbacks. The debate regarding a national DNA registry is very interesting and the intrigue is exciting. The novel could have turned out great, but somewhere along the line it falls short. Too bad.

Original title in Swedish: Ingenstans under himlen