Death in a small village: Camilla Lackberg

In recent times, some of my better crime fiction features have not been available to read in full online, unless you were a subscriber to the New Zealand Listener, an excellent current affairs magazine that has an online paywall.

However, the Listener does place some stories freely available online, and thanks to her recent appearance at the Auckland Writers Festival, my recent feature on the terrific and talented Camilla Lackberg has been opened up for the online world to read. I had the pleasure of meeting Camilla at Harrogate in 2012, and enjoyed interviewing her again recently before her trip downunder. She is appearing at the Sydney Writers Festival today.

Death in a small village
Giving up work as an economist to let murderers loose on her childhood home has made Camilla Läckberg Sweden’s most popular crime writer. By Craig Sisterson

For a little more than a decade, bodies have slowly but surely been piling up in the tiny fishing village of Fjällbacka on Sweden’s west coast. Gilded by mountain and sea, the picturesque hamlet has gone from being famous for herring, crayfish and summer visits by film star Ingrid Bergman to having a reputation for murder.

In among the peace of lapping tides and creaking boats, crime scenes are plentiful. People around the globe read of death and violence, of corpses in baths or hanging from diving boards. But the locals, numbering fewer than a thousand, don’t seem to mind. In fact, they’ve embraced their newfound status and even the culprit herself. Visitors can take guided tours inspired by the killings.

Read full article online here.

Have you read Camilla Lackberg? Do you enjoy Nordic Noir?