Swedish crime novels are IN. Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy is totally dominating book charts, with a Hollywood movie in the pipeline, and the best current crime series on the BBC right now is Henning Mankell’s Wallander for me.

Kurt Wallander is a bitter, old, unhappy detective, serving his detecting duties at Ystad, Sweden, while dealing with his rather miserable personal life. Not only he has to solve the most horrific crimes, he has to deal with an Alzheimer dad, an estranged daughter, a divorced wife, and (minor spoiler) he develops diabetes! It’s difficult to enjoy a novel with all this doom and gloom, but how it’s all presented makes it a compelling read and watch.

I got my first impression of Wallander and his miserable life through the BBC TV series. The second (really short) season of Wallander recently aired on BBC, and it’s now available on iTunes as well. Although there’s a new Swedish version of the show, the British production starring Kenneth Branagh is the one to get. The three, 2-hour long episodes of the season form a loose story arc, dealing with Kurt’s relationship with his father. The three crimes are equally horrifying, and deal with really disparate issues, including abuse, racial tensions, and pure evil in humans. I don’t think I would have kept on watching this just for the stories though. What drew me in is that these films are just beautifully shot. The landscapes, the Swedish countryside (filmed in real-life Ystad), houses, faces, interiors, almost every frame would do well as a standalone photograph. Apparently they’ve used Red One cameras, with some fantastic directorial vision to create these stunning visuals. The moody, atmospheric pictures serve the bleak stories very well, and Kenneth Branagh’s portrayal of Wallander is just as wonderful and subdued. It’s a magical experience, and all this in a crime TV show!

The TV series made me try the book series as well. I’ve found One Step Behind on a sale at Audible, and I have not seen the story, which was part of Season 1 on the TV show, so I bought the book. It’s a BIG book, 16 hours long in audiobook form. It took me probably 3 weeks of commute to finish it, but just like with the TV show, the slow-moving, contemplative pace of the story makes us focus on characters, lives, and thoughts instead of constant action. The author practically puts us into Kurt Wallander’s head, hearing his every thought, following every insignificant action like eating a pizza or taking a leak. Actually, we’re treated to at least 20 taking-a-leak scenes! This could be annoying or boring, but in the end it creates such a strong bond to the character, we can really feel and think with him, which is an awesome experience. I’ll probably not jump into another Wallander book for a while, but it was a great read for sure.

Get the Audiobook at Audible, and download Season 2 of the TV show from the iTunes store.

It’s great to see some good sci-fi on television, hey, I even appreciate bad sci-fi nowadays, just to have something to watch other than crime procedurals and family stuff. I was immediately on board with FlashForward from episode 1, I loved the concept of the flash-forward. If you’re not familiar with the series, basically in present time a strange event happens, for a few minutes, everybody “jumps forward in time”, and experiences a specific time point in the future.

The series deals with how seeing the future impacts the life, beliefs, relationships, and decisions of people. It is wrapped around a suspenseful detective story, with the main protagonist being a police officer who tries to find out what caused the flash-forward, and untangle a strange conspiracy around it. While the main thread of the story is the investigation, each episode deals with the personal aspects of seeing the future as well, in terms of a marriage, father-daughter relationship, and knowing that you’ll die at a certain date. A key question in the show is if the future is pre-determined, or we can change the events if we know about them.

While I loved the concept, as the first season progressed, I’ve found the series somewhat slow in revealing information, and the constant internal struggle that the detective has on the subject of his alcohol addiction and the future of his marriage was getting to be a bit annoying.

The big break halfway through the series’ Season 1 allowed me to spend some time reading the Robert J. Sawyer book which was the basis for the show.

While the flash-forward event is also the basic premise of the book, the story and the characters are completely different. The TV show follows an investigation, the book’s main characters are the scientists who may or may not caused the flash-forward. Despite the different setup, I did find lots of common threads in the book and the show, including the question of the pre-determined future. It also looks at the marriage, parenthood, and death related aspects of knowing a potential future.

An unexpected commonality between the two different stories is that the book is also quite slow moving, but at least it did provide some potential answers to the cause of the flash-forward and built on it throughout the book. Just like in the TV show, I also got quite annoyed at the main protagonist and his inability to see how he could change to change his future.

Now that the second part of Season 1 of the TV show starts up this month, I’m eager to see how the show progresses, and I’m hoping that we get some answers soon, instead of dragging on with the conspiracy into Season 2.

Get the Audiobook at Audible, and download the TV show on iTunes.