Rare, medium or well done, Nordic Noir is a smorgasbord of voices, styles and approaches. When we covered crime, recently, we had hesitated to include this genre as it is pretty popular. However, out of the blue, Itiuvacha was blessed with a hot tip! Guest blogger Ellen Kapusniak has deftly woven us a review of a book by a new kid on the Scandinavian block.
Well, "Onkel Danny" is neither a kid nor really new on the block. However, though he stands on the giant shoulders of such as Raymond Chandler, he remains a dark horse outside of Denmark.
I have a soft spot for somewhat downtrodden sleuths: Ian Rankin's Rebus, Michael Connolly's Bosch and Elly Griffith's Dr. Ruth Galloway, among others. In the hunt for new characters to discover and fresh crimes to solve, I first ventured into the now highly popular Nordic Noir genre many years ago through Henning Mankell's Wallander novels and I liked what I found.
A more recent trip to the bookshop, hoping for fresh and gritty cases to crack, led me to a noir crime novel by Danish writer Dan Turèll, "Murder in the Dark" (English translation by Mark Mussari). The title of this novel is strictly no-frills and feels almost deliberately generic, which cleverly gives it the effect of immediately standing out.
In this 1981 novel, the first of his Mord-serie (murder series), we step into the shoes of Turèll's always unnamed and fully-hardened newspaper reporter, trudging persistently through an unexpectedly raw and seedy version of Copenhagen, soaking up the character's overwhelming curiosity and absolute need to follow the trail and get to the bottom of things. Along the way, our nameless reporter is helped by and rubs along with a seemingly even more world-weary police inspector.
The story feels somewhat nebulous yet remarkably gripping, with some interesting stumbles along alleyways of answers; but what shines out most of all is the sentimentality that the City itself brings out in Turèll's writing, the aspects of its architecture, atmosphere and life he chooses to portray, grim and ugly at surface-level, are described and observed with obvious affection as he brings out the beauty of changing skies overlooking mazes of dark corners, stairs, passages, rooms and streets filled with whisky, whores, weed, music, eccentrics, telephones, money, murders, and a relentless mystery to solve.
Apparently Dan Turell was always very popular in Denmark. There is even a square in Copenhagen named after him.
Well, "Onkel Danny" is neither a kid nor really new on the block. However, though he stands on the giant shoulders of such as Raymond Chandler, he remains a dark horse outside of Denmark.
I have a soft spot for somewhat downtrodden sleuths: Ian Rankin's Rebus, Michael Connolly's Bosch and Elly Griffith's Dr. Ruth Galloway, among others. In the hunt for new characters to discover and fresh crimes to solve, I first ventured into the now highly popular Nordic Noir genre many years ago through Henning Mankell's Wallander novels and I liked what I found.
A more recent trip to the bookshop, hoping for fresh and gritty cases to crack, led me to a noir crime novel by Danish writer Dan Turèll, "Murder in the Dark" (English translation by Mark Mussari). The title of this novel is strictly no-frills and feels almost deliberately generic, which cleverly gives it the effect of immediately standing out.
In this 1981 novel, the first of his Mord-serie (murder series), we step into the shoes of Turèll's always unnamed and fully-hardened newspaper reporter, trudging persistently through an unexpectedly raw and seedy version of Copenhagen, soaking up the character's overwhelming curiosity and absolute need to follow the trail and get to the bottom of things. Along the way, our nameless reporter is helped by and rubs along with a seemingly even more world-weary police inspector.
Apparently Dan Turell was always very popular in Denmark. There is even a square in Copenhagen named after him.
Ellen Kapusniak
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| Image by Lisa Risager (Dan Turells Plads), via Wikimedia Commons |
Revolvy.com offers fascinating trivia about Turell, such as
Many will remember him for his black nail polish.
On the brink of shifting the focus from crime to food, it is deliciously timely to have this intro to a new name in noir. Denmark ranks well both as tourist destination as well as on the food front.
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| By Oyvind Roti, via Wikimedia Commons |
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