I found the anthology A Darker Shade of Sweden on a local library, edited and
translated by John-Henri Holmberg, and published by The Mysterious Press, New
York, 2014 (361 pages). So I borrowed the book and read it. See
http://www.amazon.com/Darker-Shade-Sweden-John-Henri-Holmberg/dp/0802122434
In his introduction the editor gives us a short history of Swedish crime
fiction, noting the special importance of eg Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, Henning
Mankell and later Stieg Larsson, which the anthology reprints a fanzine short
story by (originally from the zine Sfären, 1972). But he is wrong saying it is
the first anthology in English with Swedish crime fiction.The Short Story
Masters society published Crime the Swedish Way back in 2008, where I had the
honour to be included, which was also given away for free to *all* attendees of
that year's Bouchercon, ie distribution was rather wide. (I believe a total of
ca 2500 copies were printed, and the book can be bought through eg Amazon.)
I have both praise and complaints about the Darker Shade-anthology. I don't
for instance understand why each story has an introduction both before and
after (except the one coming afterwards should perhaps be called an
"extroduction"?) The title refers to what has become known as Nordic Noir, ie
"darker" crime fiction, but this also means that all the selected stories might
not be my cup of tea. Already in the 70's, towards the end of the
Sjöwall/Wahlöö novel series, some reviewers though the authors had begun to
overplay that darker-side-of-society card. And later Henning Mankell almost
made into a cliche, when Kurt Wallander had ALL kinds of personal and other
problems, always muttering "this society is going down...". (In the latest
Short Story Masters anthology, I have a parody of Mankell, "Väbbsaijt utan
ansikte", picking on all his quirks. Fortunately, not all stories are in the
noir genre.
My little quirk is that I'm more fond of what we call mysteries or
whodunnits, ie to follow how some sort of crime or mystery is solved. That's
intellectually challenging and gets my brain going. Many of the stories in this
anthology involves no mystery solving at all, for some there isn't even a crime
involved, just some sort of ankward situation.
We get 17 short stories, and as I read I put a little "+" in the margin for
seven of them, that is stories I liked more than the others. I won't go through
all the stories here, but here's a few notes on some:
Anna Jansson's "The Ring" has some interesting psychology about a young kid
who pretends he lives in the world of Lord of the Rings.
Eva Gabrielsson - Stieg L's partner - makes her fiction debut with "Paul's
Last Summer". It begins promisingly with a guy unexpectedly finding his own
gravestone in the churchyard, but unfortunately the plot falls a bit flat when
what you expect will happen more or less happens. Her prose is perfectly OK,
though, and I knew she can write, eg from numerous fanzine stuff.
Talking about fanzines, Stieg Larsson's "Brain Power" from the old Sfären
zine, is a true science fiction story and only a crime story if you believe an
authoritarian society is in itself a crime. It's a story about a brain
transplant. Better written than I remember it from reading it many years back -
maybe it was a bit improved in translation?
Dag Öhrlund's "Whose Honor?" is about a Muslim father killing his daughter
for having a Swedish boyfriend - or did he? Anyway, it's a topic often covered
in newspapers and the public debate over here.
Sara Stridsberg makes a fictitious mini-biography of Eva Braun. As a WWII
buff who knows everything about this, I think it could have been a bit longer,
but it is an interesting idea. But it's not a crime story as such, unless you
believe an authoritarian society in itself is etc...
Johan Theorin gives us another tale from the island of Öland, where life is
often bordering myths and the mysterious. Here we hear about the witch island
Blue Virgin and fishermen finding skeletons.
Henning Mankell's and Håkan Nesser's "A Unlikely Meeting" lets their
respective heroes Wallander and Van Veeteren meet and they start talking about
life, the universe and everything. A story for fans of them, but rather
pointless. Why not solve a real crime?
I'd like to ask Katarina Wennstam ("Late Shall the Sinner Awaken") where she
finds the Russian Embassy in...Gothenburg? I thought it was in Stockholm.
I've saved the three best (IMHO) stories to last:
Sjöwall/Wahlöö's "The Multi-Millionaire" is something as odd as a humours
story! We met a (self-proclaimed?) millionaire on a ship, who tells the story
of how he became what he is. It reminds me of O. Henry stories and I didn't
know that dear old S/W had it in them. Otherwise they were always so gloomy.
Veronica von Schenk's "Maitreya" is a real action thriller! The heroine is
asked to infiltrate the illegal sale of stolen, historical artifacts and we get
both fists and guns playing around. Speed and high tension, not bad.
Åsa Larsson's "The Mail Run" is a Wild West (sort of) story set in northern
Sweden 100+ years ago. A mail transport is robbed and here we actually get some
of the deduction and mystery solving I long for, as the hero draws his
conclusions about whodunnit and whodidn't. Well written, but I wonder about
making the hero a "sheriff". I guess it is a way to transpose the function of
"länsman" (a sort of police) to a US audience, but in that case "marshal" would
be a better translation. A "länsman" is a government policeman.
I skip the other stories. Many of them were a bit boring, with weak plots,
lots of inner monologue à la erlebte Rede. They forget Kurt Vonnegut's golden
rule of starting a story as late as possible, which is especially important for
a short story which must be concentrated. Why have a lot of bla bla before
anything interesting happens? A novel can get away with it, but not a short
story.
But I don't think it could have been easy to find the stories. Short stories
are a sad story in Sweden, even if I see signs that things are slowly
improving. Many small magazines publishing them have folded (like JVM, Nova,
CDM), the few weeklies that still do them prefer love stories for older ladies,
the big publishers very seldom publish anthologies, and so on. From the rights
list last I notice that six of the stories comes from the yearly Christmas
collections done by Semic! (And a seventh is a Christmas story too.) That's
why so many of the stories in A Darker Shade talk about Donald Duck's
Christmas show, Lucia and mulled wine... And Semic is a comics book publisher!
They do a Christmas magazine catalogue they kid school kids to try to sell
from, knocking on all the doors in the neighbourhood. It says something about
the short story market that a leading series of Swedish anthologies comes from
those circumstances.
If I could have wished for something, it would be that Holmberg would have
included some older fiction, from historically important authors. The noir
theme doesn't hold for all the stories anyway. Why not one of the Sherlock
Holmes parodies (they were short stories) by Sture Stig, who he mentions in the
introduction. Stieg Trenter, also mentioned, wrote short stories; a collection
was published just a few years ago. The fact is that if we go back some 50
years and even further it would be much, much easier to find good Swedish crime
fiction in the short story format. Until TV and comic books and pop music took
over there were numerous short story magazines, the newspapers ran short
stories every weekend, we had short story readings on radio like Torsten
Jungstedt's shows, and so on. (The present slight improvement I'm talking about
is that there are a number of anthologies coming, but from small press
publishers, some publishers evenso tiny they hardly exist.)
Maybe someone could make a collection of good Swedish crime fiction from the
past in the future?
--Ahrvid
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