A chance encounter, six or seven years ago, at the small library in town, introduced me to the world of Crime and Thriller novels, and my interest has not wavered since. Piecing together the clues that the author has left scattered within the book, often to the wrong conclusion, never seem to get old. And the inevitable twist that seems to pop up in so many of these novels never fails to catch me. However, there is one sub-genre that has only recently caught my eye: Nordic Noir.
I was walking through Blackwells in Oxford a few weeks ago, and as I usually do, I stop to look at their Crime section. However, during this trip, I decided to have a proper look at their Nordic crime section, something that I had seen in passing before but never taken the time to properly look at. It was not a partially big section, only having eight or nine different books, but I still decided to investigate. Which lead to me picking up Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson.
Snowblind is not a very long book, only having 300 pages, but this was perfect for me as I have university work that I should be concentrating more time on, but oh well. Due to its length, and also how captivating the book is, I managed to read it in an evening and subsequently wanted to know more about the book, and more importantly, whether or not Ragnar Jónasson had written more books.
To my joy, I found that Ragnar Jónasson had written more books, and even better, he had written four more following the same characters as the one I had just read. Although I decided to pace myself when it comes to the rest of the books, I did question why I hadn’t thought to read these novels and other novels that were written and translated from Icelandic before?
Though there are many lists and other blog posts on the internet that highlight the Best Scandinavian Crime Novels of 2018 and the 11 Scandinavian Crime Novels That Would Make Kick-Ass Movies, there was not a lot of displays in the bookshops. In Blackwells, what had once been its own table with around books has now been downgraded to a shelf with less than 10. Why? If these books are so good, then why aren’t they being marketed in such a way?
In my opinion, they are good books, and with the number of new authors and series popping up the consumers obviously think so as well. Maybe consumers overall are just becoming sick of crime and thriller novels, despite the wide variety of genres?
