The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell, Knopf

Eh? China? Wallander?
You’re right, m’dear, this is by Henning Mankell, who writes those gloomy Swedish thrillers about depressed detective Kurt Wallander - but this time his lead is a woman and his villain Chinese.
A copper?
Not as such. Judge Birgitta Roslin, loosely associated with an extended family wiped out in a remote hamlet on the border between Norway and Sweden.
How loosely?
Her mammy was fostered by a couple now in the far reaches of antiquity, who are among the 19 members of the Andren clan to be sliced and diced. The police have a theory. Birgitta soon has a different one.
But Beijing? What? Where?
Meanwhile in Beijing’s wealthiest sector, a super-powerful industrialist is reading the diary of his ancestor, who was enslaved. The foreman of the railroad gang that destroyed his life was one Jan August Andren.
Straightforward revenge story then?
Indeed no - this is Mankell. Darker forces are at work. In Africa, the Chinese (nervous of internal revolution, as why wouldn’t they be) are preparing a plantation - they want to ship in millions of poor Chinese farmers.
To Africa? You’re joking?
They’re persuading the African leaders that it’s going to benefit their own people, because schools, hospitals, roads, telecommunications, etc will follow the planters to sparsely populated areas.
Mankell’s making this all up out of his head?
Hope so. Unnervingly, he has inside knowledge of Africa - the author lives part of his time in Mozambique.
It’s linked to the killings how?
The psycho who sent the killer is high up in China’s elite. And - well, read it for yourself.
Good, then?
Very good at times, but Mankell has trouble keeping all the themes - murder, Maoist theory, modern Chinese emigration, 19th-century exploitation - from spinning out of control.
Author's site

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest by Stieg Larsson

Maclehose

Thriller by Swedish reporter, ja?
You betcha. Third and last of the series by the late Stieg Larsson, founder of anti-racist magazine Expo and world authority on right-wing extremist groups. He handed a publisher the manuscripts of the three books and promptly dropped dead aged 50. The books have been an international sensation.
Nice for his heirs
Not, it turns out, for the woman who shared his life for 30 years. Under Sweden’s tight-fisted cohabitation laws, Eva Gabrielsson isn’t entitled to a single öre.
Ouchy
She’s going to write about it, apparently. But meanwhile…
Oh yah, the hornet’s nest
Hornets’, plural. Lisbeth Salander, our hero, starts the book in hospital with a brain injury and riddled with bullets.
Eee, no - it’s not about her?
Not for the first 250 pages or so; you can basically skip them. At that stage, ace reporter Blomkvist - Larsson’s fictional alter ego - smuggles in her Palm Tungsten, and she’s suckin’ diesel again.
Who are these eponymous hornets?
Basically, Sweden’s security services - they’ve been covering up after a cell of lunatic Russian defectors and psycho killers for years - and in the process they’ve had young Lisbeth confined to a mental hospital for much of her youth. Now, facing exposure, they have too much to lose.
So it’s a spy story?
Ironically, in the circs, it’s about suppression of women, and how male society closes ranks to enable violent men.
Salander’s a hacker, if I remember rightly
And her faceless friends, citizens of the online ‘Hacker Republic’, weigh in to help her, as do unconnected women - a newspaper editor, a lawyer, a security official and a policewoman. And Blomkvist, natch.
Good, then?
To be honest, not as great as the first two. But I’ll bet fans will read it just to find out what happens to Salander.
Stieg Larsson site

The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Quercus €22.94
IF YOU want a book to take on your lifetime trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl who Played with Fire is the one. Better to load it on your Kindle or iPhone if possible, though, because it’s a huge thing.
Larsson, a Swedish investigative journalist, brought his thriller trilogy to his publisher and promptly died of a heart attack at 50, is a hellish loss to literature.
The characters are the same as in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first of the series, but they’ve grown up. Lisbeth Salander, genius hacker and a paragon of body art, is wandering the world, discarding her nipple and tongue rings but (weirdly) getting her boobs done.
Mikael Blomkvist, editor of Millennium magazine, is preparing to publish a book about sex trafficking - as Larsson put it, “the finances of rape”.
Salander discovers that this probe revisits her own violent past. When a series of brutal murders happens, she’s right in the frame, and becomes a tabloid star as Sweden’s answer to Psycho Killer.
The tension torques tighter and tighter, there’s a shock with every page you turn, and the characters are tightly written and very likeable. The best thriller I’ve read in ages.
Publisher's site

The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg

HarperCollins

IN AN ice-crusted bathtub, her lips blue, lies the Ice Princess - Alex, the beauty of the fishing town of Fjallbacka, her wrists slit.
The handyman who finds her body rushes straight to the nearest neighbour, professional writer Erica, to phone the police.
So far, so unremarkable. But Camilla Lackberg's story is more than a police procedural.
It's odd to find such warm-hearted, ordinary characters in a thriller as we have here. Everyone is human, in their kindness or unkindness or even psychopathy in one case
Erica was once Alex's best friend, and now she decides to write Alex's story. She - and the shy policeman who has always fancied Erica - discover that Alex had secret contacts all over the town.
One is a brilliant painter, a wino, son of the woman who cleans house for the aristocracy of the town of Fjallbacka. He is the obvious suspect for the murder. Until he turns up dead himself.
Meanwhile Erica's love life is taking comic and sweet turns - but I won't spoil it by saying how.
I couldn't put this book down, and at some points in the bank holiday weekend was rushing helplessly between the compost I was riddling and The Ice Princess, unable to abandon either.
Brilliantly plotted, this is a big hit in Sweden - to the extent that a Google search for Camilla Lackberg brings up many torrents of the TV version of the book.