The Hypnotist / Lars Kepler

The latest sensation in the seemingly unending Swedish crime-thriller juggernaut comes in the form of Lars Kepler, a pseudonym for a husband-wife writing team (the new Sjöwall and Wahlöö?). Their debut novel is called The Hypnotist, a nearly 500-page roller-coaster ride that never stops delivering the thrills. When a doctor is asked to hypnotize a crime victim to find out information about the perpetrator, his revelations cause all hell to break loose.

There is violence aplenty within the pages of this book (it makes me shudder to look at the cover image) and there are a couple criminal monsters who seem to have been created in the same mold as Hannibal Lecter, so this book is definitely not for the faint of heart.

In spite of some instances of unexpected switches of narrator, the story flows quite well and there is a good sense of place— most notably Stockholm around Christmas time with lots of glögg, saffron buns, and advent stars in windows.

I like the character of finlandssvensk police detective Joona Linna, though some of his mannerisms and dialectal idiosyncrasies are probably lost in translation. And you get the notion that Finnish and Ume Sami are one and the same, or else Joona has a remarkable linguistic background—it isn’t explained (Ume Sami apparently only has a handful of speakers left).

This is the first novel in a planned eight-book series. If you were disappointed that the Millennium series stopped before it really got started, then stick around for Lars Kepler’s forthcoming titles. The second book Paganinikontraktet has already been published to good reviews in Sweden, so I’m sure we can expect a translation rather soon.

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If you like your mysteries set in European locales, here’s a Parisian detective series that is sure to please. Aimée Leduc is a private eye, born of a French career detective and an absentee American mother (brief hints of angst over this in this installment). She’s appeared in about ten adventures, always set in iconic Parisian neighborhoods : Murder in the Marais, Murder in the Bastille, Murder in Montmartre, and Murder in the Latin Quarter , to name a few. In Murder in Passy (Paris’s tony XVIe arrondissement), Aimée finds herself mixed up in a murderous intrigue involving the French arm of the Basque nationalist movement. The final chase involves the kidnapping of a Spanish princess, a secret torture chamber used by the Gestapo in WWII, and a rooftop escape. The author sprinkles enough French words into the dialogue to either annoy you or make you feel your French 101 was not for nothing— Zut alors! très chic, c’est parfait, désolé, c’est tout! Oh, and Aimée’s frequent stop...

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