Scandi noir

What is it with me and these books?
 
I am strongly attracted to the genre, yet struggle to find a Nordic author who really does it for me.
 
I was once asked as a boy my favourite colour. “Dark black,” I said. And this is what noir in the land of the endless winter night promises to be. The dark represents, of course, the Underworld of our unconscious, the unknown. Its thrill and its risk and its magical potentiality. Will it be disappointment or reward? Will the light go on and show you to be in an empty, manmade cellar, or a natural cave whose rock can be mined for something more valuable than gold? Is it a trap, or the only way out? A scenario where fortune favours the brave. Courage, said Aristotle, is chief among virtues, for it is the guarantor of all others. Something in the bleak and austere emptiness attracts the human soul. Its very featureless draws out the searching question. Does the winter offer a place of death or a hidden refuge, despair or the sheltered seeds of spring? 
 
So, then, in the overland netherworld, in countries which represent for us the quintessence of social normality, cool, calm and collected, conscientious citizens and intelligence ruling passion, the scene is set for the totally unexpected. I am ready to be darkened with delight.
 
Sweden
I started with The Laughing Policeman, the first in Sjöwall & Wahlöö’s Martin Beck series and found it flat and uninspiring. The Man Who Went Up in Smoke had the same plodding out of sentences. Was it a clumsy translation? Or was the style just off? The prose is just so lifeless. There’s no rhythm. A series of sentence statements. No Hemingway or Elmore Leonard, this. The visual scenes are unclear (eg Beck under the bridge in Budapest) and the investigative solution humdrum.
 
Henning Mankell – Faceless Killers
I had high hopes for Kurt Wallender, but was neither charmed by atmosphere nor gripped by tightness of drama. Again, I don’t know if something was lost in translation, but there was no pace or tension.
 
Iceland
Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson. Again, the tension fails to mount and hold. It drags and becomes repetitive. The revelation in the end is no great shakes. A darn shame. I have had a fondness for Iceland ever since I fell in love at first sight in Reykjavik post office.
 
Finland
I then tried The Man Who Died by Antti Tuomainen, for no better reason than it was the same title as a story of mine. In Tuomainen’s book, an overweight, terminally ill man springs into action in extraordinary ways and it’s all rather fatuous. Carl Hiaasen high jinks without the satirical solidity.
 
Norway
Jo Nesbo. Come on, Jo, I thought. Give me a cracking good read. Neh, it wasn’t to be. I found Blood on Snow simply unremarkable and I just gave up on Redbreast, one of the early Harry Hole series, after 150 pages and still waiting to be given a clue of what it’s about.
 
Writing for TV, on the other hand, has produced absolutely gripping Nordic drama in The Killing and The Bridge, not mention the wonderful Unbeforeigners.
 
Meanwhile, I continue to look for Scandi or other European noir writing with depth, brilliance and a lead character to rival, say, Philip Kerr’s splendid Bernie Gunther.