Scandinavian Crime Fiction

Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen is Senior Lecturer in Scandinavian Literature at University College London, UK. His previous publications include (as co-editor) World Literature, World Culture: History, Theory, Analysis (2008).

• Introduction1. Scandinavian crime fiction and the welfare state2. Welfare crime: Sjöwall and Wahlöö's Novel of a Crime3. The hardboiled social worker: Gunnar Staalesen's Varg Veum4. Crime fiction in an age of crisis: Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers and Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo5. Landscape and memory in the criminal periphery6. Criminal peripheries: Peter Høeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for snow and Kerstin Ekman's Blackwater7. Investigating the family in the welfare stateConclusionBibliographyIndex

[In] this exemplary study ... [themes] are treated with an analytical precision that both anatomises the key elements for those new to the genre and finds myriad new insights for old hands like myself. Scandinavian Crime Fiction becomes, at a stroke, a key work in the ongoing analysis of Nesbo, Larsson, Fossum, Mankell & Co., crammed with acute observation from a man whose knowledge and understanding of the genre is nonpareil.