Scandicrime

In Competition No. 2756 you were invited to submit your contribution to the booming genre of Scandinavian crime fiction.

Guidance is at hand courtesy of Barry Forshaw, author of Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, who has compiled a list of ten tips on how to write a masterpiece of Nordic noir. First and foremost, he says, know your landscape: ‘make sure you evoke your locale with maximum atmosphere, be it the endless forests and big skies of Sweden, Finland’s lakes…’

Other Scandi staples, such as torture, mutilation, alienation and conspicuously Nordic knitwear, featured strongly in an entry that by and large nailed the genre nicely. Winners get £25 each, with Alanna Blake taking the bonus fiver.

Detective Inspector Erika Eriksen drove the 50 kilometres through flat, empty countryside as she did every evening to ensure her ailing mother was eating adequately. Heavy snow had fallen steadily since she left Police HQ. A rising wind buffeted the car as, in growing darkness, she crossed the causeway where the decapitated corpses had lain the previous week. Despite being late, she stopped for her regular session of reviewing and brooding. Blindly she gazed through the windscreen, visualising the mutilated hanging bodies of two teenagers whose parents she must see next. After Nieholm, she would visit her oldest friend who had terminal cancer and then, as always, call on Kurt, her revered colleague, forcibly retired after a horrendous shooting had left him wheelchair-bound. At home, Nils again would wait in vain for his bedtime story. With luck, there wouldn’t be another emergency tonight. She turned the key and drove on.
Alanna Blake