More Scandinavian crime. This time we’re in the rural North of Sweden with the first in Asa Larsson’s darkly foreboding series featuring troubled tax lawyer, Rebecka Martinsson and pregnant detective, Anna-Maria Mella.

A charismatic evangelistic preacher is found by his sister and her daughters horribly murdered in the huge church, that in every way dominates the small town of Kiruna. Eager for a quick resolution the police appear ready to settle on the sister as their prime suspect. She then contacts her estranged friend, high-flying Stockholm tax lawyer and ex church member, Rebecka Martinsson, to intervene on her behalf. Although initially reluctant, Rebecka is forced by complicated bonds of loyalty to help her friend out.

On arrival it soon emerges Rebecka was forced to leave both the church and Kiruna for some serious but unnamed transgression. Consequently what Rebecka faces is a town under hidden instructions not to co-operate, a barely functioning friend, a boss who wants her back, a politically motivated Chief Prosecutor and an overwhelming sense of residual guilt and resentment. The only glimmer of a saving grace is help from a sympathetic police inspector.

What is so pleasing about Euro crime is the tone of voice, especially when it is interlinked with a specific sense of place. In that respect The Savage Altar is a success. It is a grim tale rooted in a realistically created world, populated by convincingly drawn people who are not universally liked or likeable and unfolds in an everyday manner, where people and personal connections are messy, complicated and these relationships shape the story. Both Rebecka and Anna-Maria are credible professionals but also faulty human beings drawn into an extraordinary episode where both behave in believable ways. Neither are instantly likeable, neither are particularly sympathetic but both are oddly appealing and seem to be interesting and well enough drawn to sustain that appeal over a series.

I’m less enamoured of the church-specific part of the setting and the plot. It is no great revelation to say organisations that present to the world an outwardly moral face may be concealing a dark heart – particularly here where the mystery is not very mysterious. The force of the writing is certainly enough to sustain The Savage Altar but perhaps won’t be across an entire series if Kiruna’s church remains at the centre. I hope the characters move on from Kiruna, if not in The Blood Spilt, out this month, then at least by The Black Path, due here in July. The seemingly inexorable translation into English of all Swedish crime continues apace. Huzzah.

One more quibble, the original title, Sun Storm, seems to me far more evocative of brooding Northern Sweden than the garish Savage Altar. I appreciate the need to sell a book, but do already successful foreign books really require such hucksterish retitling to succeed here – especially when Sun Storm is the title used in America? I suspect not.

Bookmark to