Inger Frimansson is well established as a Swedish crime writer, and Good Night, My Darling is one of her best books. It has won the Swedish Academy of Mystery Authors Award for Best Swedish Crime Novel in 1998.

Good Night, My Darling is the first book in a series about the mysterious Justine Dalvik, a wealthy and eccentric woman in her forties living alone in a big house by the beach, with a bird as her only companion. It is a beautiful house, but full of memories of a tortured childhood. As readers, we are witnesses to her childhood hardships. And we start to are feel vindictive on her behalf. However, not until Justine is in her forties does she catch up with the our feelings.

Inger Frimansson enables the reader to enter Justine’s child-thoughts of being an almost willing victim while she absorbs both the hurt and the methods of cruelty used to hurt her. We sympathize with Justine the child, but as she grows to maturity we become less sympathetic. Now the memories come back to haunt Justine, but she is prepared. It is time for Justine to take revenge on everyone who has done her wrong. Terrible things start to happen.

Inger Frimansson has the courage to experiment with the crime genre. Good night, my darling is not a whodunit or a thriller. This book is a how-could-she-do-it. In her effort to understand this - to peer into the mind of a dark soul - Frimansson has written a deeply psychological crime novel which in several ways reminds me of the Norwegian author Karin Fossum.

Good Night, My Darling takes a while to really pick up speed, but when it does, the tension is almost unbearable. Putting it away does not feel as an option before the end is reached.

Praise for Good Night, My Darling:

“With this book, she stands out as one of the great authors of psychological suspense in contemporary Swedish literature.” - GT

”
.. whereas Mankell often tries to pinpoint the external factors which shape our lives, Frimansson concentrates on what we look like on the inside; what it feels like to be at someone’s mercy.” - Eskilstuna Kuriren

Order Good Night, My Darling by Inger Frimansson from Amazon UK: Good Night, My Darling.

The Fire Engine That Disappeared, originally published in 1969, is one of the books in the marvelous series about Swedish detective Martin Beck and his colleagues, written by Maj Sjowall (Sjöwall) and Per Wahloo (Wahlöö). According to Wahlöö, their intention was to “use the crime novel as a scalpel cutting open the belly of the ideological pauperized and morally debatable so-called welfare state of the bourgeois type.” How well they succeeded as far as the social criticism of the Swedish welfare state is concerned, is open to debate. However, what they did succeed in, was the creation of one of the most interesting and wonderful series of crime novels ever.

In The Fire Engine That Disappeared, detective Gunnvald Larsson and a street cop are on a stake-out when the house they are watching turns into a blaze of flames. While Larsson tries to rescue the survivors, the other cop runs to a phone booth to call in the fire brigade.

As Melander, another of Beck’s colorful colleagues, finds out through painstaking research, one of the inhabitants had committed suicide by closing off all holes in his room, and then filling it with gas. But even when the case is closed, there are a few doubts nagging at the backs of the heads of Martin Beck and Gunnvald Larsson. What caused the gas to explode? Where did the fire engine go that was originally called in?

All attention is focused on finding a possible suspect. Then the suspect is found dead in a car. Further investigation shows that the man was already dead when the house was blown up. The Fire Engine that Disappeared is a top police procedural. It is a wonderful read. However, reading the whole series in sequence is strongly recommended!

In our opinion, Sjowall & Wahloo’s series about Marin Besk is one of the top five series of crime books ever written. Some firmly place it in the number one spot. The stories are great, it works as a series, it is excellently written, the plots are rich and well executed, and the books are both interesting, engaging and funny as well. Great reads. How much more do you want? You can read more about the series at our site!

Order The Fire Engine That Disappeared (Martin Beck) from Amazon UK!

The organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest fair for the book and media industry, have conducted a survey of book industry professionals. They asked respondents to identify the challenges and threats facing the industry, as well as to predict emerging trends and areas of growth. A total of 1,324 industry professionals from 86 countries responded to the survey.

Challenges facing the industry

• Over half (53 per cent) identified digitisation as the biggest challenge facing the industry, reflecting one of the key themes of the Frankfurt Book Fair.
• Other challenges cited were increasing globalisation (24 per cent), user-generated content (22 per cent) and the ongoing battle over territorial rights (15 per cent).
• Concerns about digitisation were strongest in Anglophone countries, with 71 per cent of North Americans, 77 per cent of Australasians and 68 per cent of UK respondents marking this challenge as the most important.

The top four threats to the industry

Asked what is the biggest threat to the publishing industry today, respondents said:

1. competition from other media and sources of entertainment (50 per cent)
2. over-publishing (31 per cent)
3. the proliferation of piracy (23 per cent)
4. illiteracy levels in both western Europe and the developing world (17 per cent)

As unlikely as it would seem only 5 years ago, digitization is rapidly rising. Most likely new electronic book readers (e-book readers) will emerge that make it even easier to read books electronically. The change will take time, of course, but with continued high prices on books and a continuation of the practice of delaying publication of paperbacks to milk the market, it seems book publishers are undermining their own business.

I enjoy reading Knut Hamsun. He writes elegantly and beautiful, and I like his sense of humor. Pan is about Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, living in a hunting cabin up in the Northern part of Norway, along with his dog, Aesop. He lives not far from the village Sirius, and interacts with people there. Then something happens which turns his life upside down.

Pan is a wonderful Hamsun book. Otto Weineger claimed it was the most beautiful book ever written. In Pan, Hamsun is concerned with the beauty of nature and our relationship to it. His descriptions are beautiful. His mastery of language, and his very conscious use of it, is intruiging. He uses language to underscore what is happening. For instance, when Glahn is alone, his sentences are long, drawn out, but when he talks to women, his sentences are short, distinct, intense. In addition, the story in Pan is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.

Pan, in my humbe opinion, is one of the most interesting books written by Hamsun, a true masterpiece. At the center of the book is the eternal battle of the sexes. The book is full of pure poetry and “lyric outbursts”. Pan is also, deservedly, one of the most widely known works by Knut Hamsun.