Sweden: Camilla Lackberg as the new Agatha Christie? A review of 'The Ice Princess'

The third stop on WhereDunnit's crime fiction tour of Sweden is the small fishing village of Fjällbacka, setting for Camilla Lackberg's first novel The Ice Princess.

Although she is the author of six books featuring Inspector Patrik Hedstrom of the Tanumshede police and writer Erica Falck, only one has been translated into English so far, with another, The Preacher, due for release in February. Lackberg has been called Sweden's Agatha Christie, and while it is certainly true that The Ice Princess is a beautifully plotted whodunnit, the characterisation and description is far more rich and dense than this comparison implies.

What she does share with many of Christie's stories is the setting she has chosen for her series: a self-contained community, where everyone tries to know everybody else's business, and secrets are hard to protect – but where keeping up appearances is vital. The community in The Ice Princess is the coastal village of Fjällbacka, where Lackberg herself was born and lived as a child.

When author Erica Falck returns to her childhood home in Fjällbacka to tidy up loose ends after the sudden death of her parents, she discovers the frozen, dead body of a schoolfriend she hasn't seen for decades. Reluctantly at first, and with the help of local police inspector Patrik Hedstrom, she begins to unravel the threads of mysteries that have lain hidden at the heart of the community for many years.

The importance of the setting is emphasised by the inclusion of a map of Fjällbacka, and the descriptions of the landscape are both vivid and an integral part of the story. One of the subplots concerns tourists and incomers from Stockholm buying up traditional homes just to use in the summer for holidays.

The characters are deftly drawn: Erica is a sympathetic lead: despite her tall blonde attractiveness – which would normally set me against her from the get-go - she is a little preoccupied about her weight, and, at thirty five and alone, worries about never having a partner or a child. The police squad are a cast of the usual suspects – the fiercely efficient secretary, the one coasting towards retirement, the suck-up – but my favourite is Police Chief Bertil Mellberg, with his paunch, his uncontrollable comb-over and his unshakable self-belief. Think Andy Dalziel without the charm or grace …. or skill.

Fjallbacka is about 90 miles north of Göteborg (Gothenburg) on the west coast of Sweden up near the border with Norway's coast. Although now primarily a tourist destination because of the picturesque aspect of the many original buildings, in the past it was a fishing village and it is this history which is important in The Ice Princess.

Fjällbacka means 'mountain hill' because the village is situated around the huge stone cliff of Vetteberget which is fractured by a fissure known as Kungsklyftan (King's Chasm/Cleft). The village is surrounded by an archipelago of lovely tiny islands, which also attracts many tourists – including, in the past, the famous movie actress Ingrid Bergman, who owned an island in the Fjallbacka archipelago and loved to go there each summer. At her request, after her death her ashes were scattered around Fjallbacka, and her statue was erected in the village square which was renamed in her honour.The hotel in the village, the Storla Hotellet Fjallbacka had mixed reviews on Tripadvisor, but most of the information available is of course in Swedish. There are more images here.

The Ice Princess and The Preacher have been made into a successful series for Swedish television. Lackberg has commented: " I loved the Swedish TV-series and especially the casting, which was great. They did the two first books and the series had very high ratings when it aired in Sweden, so they will now film the next two books come this fall." There are DVDs but they are only available in Sweden and I do not know if they come with English subtitles (I know some of the Swedish Wallanders do). This website, though in Swedish, shows the actors who play the main characters.

Last summer, Lackberg and Swedish chef published a cookery book called Smaker from Fjällbacka (Tastes from Fjällbacka), only available in Swedish. A review can be found here.

Finally, one of the things I was surprised to note in passing when reading this book, which struck me again as I start reading Stieg Larsson's The Girls With The Dragon Tattoo (yes, I know I'm way behind on this) is that Sweden has a statute of limitations on homicide, so that after 25 years even first degree murderers cannot be prosecuted. In 2005 there was discussion of removing this limitation, as DNA and other trace evidence can now be recovered from very old cases, but as far as I can discover it has not been repealed yet.

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Sweden: In the footsteps of the first police series - up the Göta Canal with 'Roseanna'

The second stop on WhereDunnit's crime fiction tour of Sweden: the Göta Canal at Lake Boren.

The ten books by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo featuring Detective Martin Beck of Sweden's National Homicide Squad, which together form one work consisting of ten individual instalments, have been called the first true police procedurals, and the first great series of police thrillers. As a fan of Scandinavian crime fiction for several years, I felt it was about time I went back to this source.

It's perhaps difficult now to appreciate quite how revolutionary the concept was - a series with a protagonist detective who was an ordinary man, not a hero or Lord or ratiocinative genius, but instead which demonstrated the day-to-day slog and tedium of a protracted investigation.

It is clear where Henning Mankell found some of his inspiration for Kurt Wallander - in fact, so many European policemen can trace their lineage back to Sjowall & Wahloo's creation, an introspective, wise, philosophising man with an unhappy home-life. In this very first novel, Beck reminds himself: "You have three of the most important virtues a policeman can have – you are stubborn and logical and completely calm."

The strange thing about these books is that there is so much that is familiar and up-to-date that it's easy to forget that the first one, Roseanna, was first published in 1965. It's only when the policemen have to wait for weeks and exchange letters and crackling telephone calls with their counterparts in Lincoln, Nebraska, that the reader is pulled up with a start, to realise that this was a world without mobile phones, computerized records and internet searches.

Roseanna begins with a dead body, specifically located in date and time and place, being pulled out of the water at the western edge of Lake Boren, where a series of five locks steps the Göta Canal up to Lake Vättern. (See map - the starting point of the plot is indicated by the green circle). The investigation into the death of the girl - eventually identified as the eponymous Roseanna - develops slowly through the following seven months until Beck finally arrests the killer.

It is wonderful to discover that the cruise ship which features so vividly in the story in 1963 – the MS Diana – still operates the route today: you can take the same cruise along the Gota Canal on the same ship as the ill-fated Roseanna! The scene of the crime was cabin A7: the MS Diana was refitted in 1987, and Cabin A7 is still on the main deck, but not quite in the correct position for Roseanna's cabin as described by Sjowall and Wahloo.

To travel on the cruise Stockholm to Gothenburg costs about £3,600 for two, although as Roseanna only made it to Boren Locks (Borenshult) a few miles east of Motala before her body was dumped in the water, you can get the experience in a two-day cruise from Soderkoping to Motala for £800 for two people in a (tiny) double cabin - a bargain, then! To see for yourself, visit the Göta Canal webpage in English.

I highly recommend the edition I read, published by Harper Perennial in 2006. It features an interesting introduction by Henning Mankell, and articles and interviews at the back by Rick Shepherd. The only criticism I have is that the jacket designer clearly hadn't read the book, as Roseanna on the front has blonde hair and much make-up and bears no resemblance to the girl in the story. I intend to collect them all in this edition, if I can get hold of them – while I'm saving to to take that cruise up the Göta Canal from Stockholm to Gothenburg……..

Sweden: Henning Mankell's Wallander comes to BBC 1 on November 30th

The first stop on our crime fiction tour of Sweden: Ystad

'Wallander', the BBC series based on Swedish author Henning Mankell's series of detective stories featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander is scheduled to begin on 30th November. The first episode (of three) is entitles 'Sidetracked', and stars Kenneth Brannagh as the eponymous cop.

The stories are set in Ystad in Skane, on the southernmost coast of Sweden - which Mankell has compared to Texas: "It runs along the border. I feel that in border countries there is a special dynamism that I use in my stories."

The Ystad Tourist Office has a page on their website about Kurt Wallander, and they run an official Wallander tour called 'In The Footsteps Of Inspector Wallander'. I don't yet know whether the tour is offered in English, but even if it isn't, you can download a useful pdf guide in English. The local paper, the Ystads Allehanda, has a flash movie about Wallander's Ystad. (There is an English translation!) It also includes an interactive map of the Skanes area.

Filming for the BBC series took place in Skane, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how Mankell's spare prose and somewhat bleak vision have been interpreted for television, and set in a landscape that I've only previously experienced through his books.

Now if only I could afford to go there.......

'Sidetracked' won the CWA's Gold Dagger award in 2001, and the other two stories which will be shown are 'Firewall' and 'One Step Behind'. Mankell's stories have been filmed before, but not in English.