Crime Fiction

I’ve been reading crime fiction for a few years now, done the Patricia Cornwells and Kathy Reichs’ and got a bit “over” them. Then I discovered Scandinavian Crime Fiction. My favourite is Arnaldur Indridason who is Icelandic. His writing style is very pared-down, very little embellishment and it all moves at a leisurely pace. I like his main character Erlendur, but he seems to have gone on a holiday and the slack has been taken up by his colleagues Sigurdur Oli (a real pain in the “a”) and the female detective Elinborg (I like her).

The boring minutiae of their everyday lives keeps interrupting them and they all seem very surprised that evil exists in such a slow-moving and dark work like Iceland. Erlendur likes the winter, all dark and freezing- I can’t imagine it, sounds awful.

Here is a link to his Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaldur_Indri%C3%B0ason

“Outrage” is the latest I’ve read, the crime is solved by the wonderful Elinborg, who loves her family and writes cookbooks, a real modern woman.

At the moment I am reading Laura Lippman (American), her stuff is okay and quite intriguing, but she follows a structure that has become predictable (to me at least).