Mysterious Europe: Crime in the Old World

When we think about mysteries written by non-Americans, the books that first come to mind are all those old favorites from Great Britain that have become such a central part of our mystery reading—everyone from Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle to P.D. James, Peter Dickinson, and Ian Rankin. But there are some terrific mystery writers, old and new, from across the English Channel. Check these out and it's guaranteed, you'll discover some new favorites.

One of the grandmasters of the police procedural is Georges Simenon, who, in a seemingly unending series of novels, took us into the mind and heart of Chief Inspector Jules Maigret of the French Sûreté, a policeman who spends much of his time on the job thinking about his own physical and psychological aches and pains. A good one to start with is MAIGRET AND THE MADWOMAN (Harvest: Harcourt. May 2003. ISBN 0-15-602850-6. pap. $8), in which Maigret investigates the death of an elderly woman whose reputation as a nutcase might not be justified.

Another mainstay of European police procedurals is Nicolas Freeling, whose series of psychological mysteries featuring Dutch police inspector Peter Van der Valk remain classics of the genre (and owe much to Simenon). Van der Valk made his first appearance in LOVE IN AMSTERDAM (House of Stratus. 2001. ISBN 1-84232-839-5. pap. $12.95), originally published in 1962, but Freeling's best Van der Valk novel is probably BECAUSE OF THE CATS (Arcadia. 2000. ISBN 1-900850-36-2. pap. $13.95), in which Van der Valk unearths some rotten doings among a gang of teens who live in a wealthy Dutch town. (More than 30 years after reading this book I still remember how creeped out I was by it.) In the Edgar Award–winning THE KING OF THE RAINY COUNTRY (o.p.), Van der Valk investigates the disappearances of a millionaire and a young woman. After Freeling (shockingly) killed off Van der Valk, he began another series featuring a French police inspector named Henri Castang. You might try NOT AS FAR AS VELMA (House of Stratus. 2001. ISBN 1-84232-863-8. pap. $11.50), whose complicated plot concerns a missing person, a terrorist bombing, and a wide variety of characters who are linked by an incident that occurred in a World War II concentration camp.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Swedish husband-and-wife team of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö wrote a fine series of police procedurals focusing on Martin Beck, who supervised a group of detectives in a Stockholm police station. Two of the best are THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN (Vintage. 1992. IBSN 0-679-74223-9. pap. $12), in which Beck and his squad investigate the death of one of their own, a young policeman killed on a city bus, and THE LOCKED ROOM (Vintage. 2002. ISBN 0-679-74222-0. pap. $12.95), a classic mystery in which Beck discovers that two seemingly unrelated crimes are actually pieces of the same puzzle.

Of the new generation of wonderful European mystery authors waiting to be discovered by American readers, two of the best are Scandinavian. The protagonist of Henning Mankell's nine crime novels is Police Inspector Kurt Wallander, who lives and works in a small Swedish city. The crimes Wallander and his crew encounter are frequently gruesome and extremely troubling. As with the best police procedurals, readers come to know the personal and professional lives of a whole group of police officers and especially Wallander, whose devotion to his job remains extreme, even in the face of his deteriorating health. My current favorite is ONE STEP BEHIND (New Pr., dist. by Norton. 2002. ISBN 1-56584-652-4. $24.95; pap. Vintage. 2003. ISBN 1-4000-3151-6. $13; LJ 3/1/02), in which Wallander investigates not only the death of three college students but the subsequent murder of one of his own men, which may or may not have a bearing on the original case.

Another up-and-coming Swedish mystery novelist specializing in police work is Helene Tursten. The first volume in a new series, DETECTIVE INSPECTOR HUSS (Soho, dist. by Farrar. 2003. ISBN 1-56947-303-X. $25) is set in the seaport town of Göteborg. A policewoman in her 40s, Irene Huss investigates an apparent suicide that turns out to be murder. Along with watching her operate in a police department that is still uncomfortable with female officers, we also get an in-depth look at Huss as a wife and mother to twin teenage daughters.

European crime fiction flourishes everywhere, from the gray and chilly climate of Scandinavia to the brilliant sunshine of the Mediterranean. Sicilian Andrea Camilleri's THE TERRE-COTTA DOG (Viking. 2002. ISBN 0-670-03138-0. $19.95), a best seller in his homeland, should bring him many new fans in America. Inspector Salvo Montalbano of the fictional town of Vigata, Sicily, is presented with a case involving a break-in at a grocery store (with the loot mysteriously abandoned in plain sight), the bodies of two lovers missing since World War II, and strong indications of a Mafia connection hovering over everything. [The third novel in the series, The Snack Thief, will be published this month.—Ed.]

Born in England, Magdalen Nabb moved to Florence in 1975 and has since written a series of elegant and intelligent mysteries featuring Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the Florentine carabiniere. THE MARSHAL AND THE MADWOMAN (o.p.) revolves around the murder of a young Swiss woman, a crime that had its roots in the complicated history of World War II as it played itself out in Italy, and PROPERTY OF BLOOD (Soho, dist. by Farrar. 2001. ISBN 1-56947-251-3. $23; pap. 2002. ISBN 1-56947-310-2. $12; LJ 9/1/01) involves the kidnapping of the American widow of an impoverished Italian aristocrat, whose grown children don't seem particularly eager to get their mother ransomed.