Murder in a Cold and Peaceful Place

CC^ JwXi INTERNATIONAL rime 6lMysteky _I_ ).MADISON DAVIS Murder in a Cold and peaceful Place ^BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBb! ^jg.,!*' 3 f anyone has any lingering doubts that crime writing is JL largely theproduct of the imagi nation, the case of Iceland should put them to rest.Here is a country, about the size of Kentucky, with a population of 306,694, and roughly two-thirdsof thepeople live in the area of Reykjavik. Its crime rate is so low that itisoften jocularly called "crime free." Nonetheless, this small nation in the mid-Atlantic isamajor player in theglobal phenomenon of what was called the "Nordic Crime Wave" at a conference last May. In a presentation to the Interna tionalAssociation ofCrime Writers, a police representative explained that Iceland is not really crime free but, compared to other countries, might aswell be. Ifsomeone steals a car, there isno place todrive it,so it can probably be located in less than a week. In 2000 there were five mur ders in Iceland (none by firearm) and no manslaughters. But 1998, 2003, and 2005 held no murders at all.1 By contrast, the FBI reported 16,204murders in theUnited States for 2002, for a rate of 5.6 per 100,000, roughly ten times the Icelandic rate.2 There were 32 robberies in Iceland thatyear and only 104 prisoners in theirfive jails.3 Most of theirserious crime is alcohol-fueled and seems to come in spurts. Someone burglar izes a pharmacy and an unemployed man watching thenews thinks that might be a good idea, too, and bur glarizes a pharmacy. Maybe inthe winter itis toocold to commit crimes, and in the sum mer, there isno darkness tohide in. Mostly, Iceland's eight hundred or so police deal with driving offenses. Inmy hotel inReykjavik, a program repeated every half-hour, twenty four hours, on how to drive. One European writer I know received threetickets in two days. In Iceland, speeding will out! The relatively low crime rates forScandinavia in gen eral point to common cultural fac tors. Why then is translatedNordic crimewriting so prominent in our time? Why would nations with low crime rates produce novelists whose crime fiction is compelling to read erswhere crime ismore familiar? In theUnited States, Henning Mankell is often said tobe a battle ship thatpulls other Scandinavians in his wake. The recent PBS airing of Kenneth Branagh in threeKurt Wallander mysteries based on Man kell's novels undoubtedly increased that draw. But even ifwe admit that publishers are often as ridic ulous as moviemakers in seeking clones of successful products?it's Swedish, it'sjust like Mankell!?this isn't fair to themany Scandinavians who find publication here. Man kell had a few hugely successful predecessors in American markets, jCrime & Mystery including Peter Hoeg (Smilla's Sense ofSnow, 1991) and PerWahl?? and Maj Sj?wall (TheLaughingPoliceman, I 1971)- Justbeing translated from a foreign language is a sales negative in theminds of many publishers, yet Karin Fossum, Hakan Nesser, ?ke Edwardson, Kerstin Ekman, ?sa Larsson, Kjell Eriksson, Helene Tursten, Inger Frimansson, and oth ers have all gained spots on Ameri can mystery shelves. In 2005 a controversy erupted in Britain when the Crime Writers Association decided that translated books would no longer be eligi ble for its "best novel" award, the Gold Dagger. Icelander Arnaldur Indri?ason's Silence of theGrave had won that year, and a separate Inter national Gold Dagger was created. In the 2009 International Dagger competition just completed, five of the six shortlisted novels were Nor dic: Karin Alvtegen's Shadow (Swe den), Arnaldur Indri?ason's Arctic Chill (Iceland), Stieg Larsson's The GirlWho Played with Fire (Sweden), JoNesbo's The Redeemer (Norway), and Johan Theorin's Echoes from theDead (Sweden). Fred Vargas, a French writer who has been par ticularly successful in the Dagger competitions,won forthe third time in fouryears forher novel The Chalk CircleMan, but otherwise the Inter national Dagger competition looked almost like theGlass Key (Glasnyc keln) competition,which is theprize for the best Scandinavian crime novel. Nordic crime novels also do verywell in theGerman market (one of the top threebook markets in the world) and frequentlywin prizes there. About a dozen Icelandic crime writers have

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