Down these mean fjords

Down these mean fjords
Nordic Noir doyen Gunnar Staalesen on how crime novels are ideal for dissecting society. By Craig Sisterson

Before Jo Nesbø, Stieg Larsson or even Henning Mankell, there was Gunnar Staalesen: the doyen of Nordic Noir is revered in Scandinavia, though he remains less well-known among English speakers. Frankly, we’ve been missing out. “The modern crime novel is a useful tool for the analysis of society, from top to bottom, and that’s why I write detective stories,” says Staalesen, who began his career writing Kerouac-inspired “poetic, experimental novels” before switching to crime in the mid-1970s. [contd]

Published in the 4 July 2015 issue of the New Zealand Listener (available last week, not the current issue). Listener subscribers can read the full article online here, or you can purchase a digital version of the issue here.