Destination: Sweden

Author: Mystery writers Henning Mankell and Kerstin Ekman

A reader comments under my post on Sweden:

“For a different genre, those familiar with southern Sweden or Skane might enjoy Henning Mankell’s detective mystery series. You will find lots of description of the countryside as well as a main character whom you care about to make these books a good read.
Of note PBS is currently running these stories on their mystery series.”

****PBS schedule for Mystery Masterpiece: May 10, 17, and 31 for Wallander, starring Kenneth Branaugh as Henning Mankell’s fictional detective. Check for local times. http://pbs.org has all the information about the summer mystery series.

What a great recommendation!  In doing a little sleuthing of my own, I learned that Mankell  outsells Harry Potter in Germany, and is the most popular writer since Strindberg in his native Sweden.  Slight warning, his books are full of thought, not action. But that has not stopped them from being wildly popular.

And Todd Felton said this about Kerstin Ekman. “…a great murder mystery in the north of Sweden. Some scary stuff.” Two of her twenty books have been translated from Swedish into English, Blackwater in 1996 and Under the Snow in 1998. We were fortunate to visit with some folks who have a summer cottage in the north of Sweden, near the Norway border, the locale of Ekman’s mysteries. I definitely will want to read these. Like Mankell’s, her books are described as gloomy.

My husband and I were fortunate to visit Sweden in the sunny summer time, but those long, sunless winter days make the suicide rate soar in Sweden, and certainly add more than a little atmosphere to mysteries set there.

Thanks for the tips!

If you want to tell other folks, so they won’t miss the PBS series, click on Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon, etc. below.

Wintry Sweden photograph by photographer from Flickr. Click photo to see his photostream.