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How do you concoct a Scandi Noir blockbuster? The politically astute critiques of Swedish society pioneered by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö in the 1960s and revived by Henning Mankell in the 1990s are out of fashion. Now we need conspiracies, government corruption and serial killers, which takes a leap of imagination when set in Nordic countries where crime is low and trust in institutions is relatively high. But Scandinavian writers like Jo Nesbø and Jussi Adler-Olsen have built a sturdy suspension bridge over disbelief as elegantly constructed as the Øresund bridge.
Which leads us to THE MOUNTAIN KING. What if you put the girl with the dragon tattoo in charge of Department Q? Anders de la Motte has the answer.
Leo Asker is a brilliant detective who rubs people the wrong way and has made enemies among her colleagues. (Yes, Leo's a woman, and her cousins are Saga Norén from The Bridge and Sarah Lund of The Killing.) Thanks to the machinations of a disgruntled rival, when the daughter of a wealthy family vanishes along with a friend, Leo finds herself "promoted" to a managerial position in the basement of Malmö's police headquarters where she inherits a strange group of misfit staff in what they call "the Department of Orphaned Cases and Lost Souls."
Though she has been sidelined, she picks up some key clues to the case of the missing girl, who we know through chapters told from alternate points of view, is being held in captivity by a twisted psychopath.
Yes, the ingredients are familiar, but de la Motte has stirred it all together skillfully. His pacing and plotting are deft, involving urban exploration, an abandoned military facility deep inside a mountain, and a killer who leaves his mark with carefully-painted figurines added to a vast model train display. Leo, while a recruit from the Brilliant but Prickly Women's Police Academy, comes into her own, along with a childhood with a reclusive prepper for a father who trained her to have superior survival skills but left her traumatized. Additional characters are distinctive (apart from the stock "girl in captivity" who hasn't much original material to work with) and the misdirection is nicely done, leaving readers hanging pleasurably on a cliff to await the next installment in the series.
In short, it's a well-constructed and gripping entertainment. Just don't expect anything especially new.
§ Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, February 2024
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