First in the Rebecka Martinsson mystery series and revolving around a Stockholm lawyer in a personal crisis.It won the 2003 Swedish Crime Writers’ Association Prize for best debut novel.My TakeIt starts out very spookily as we read of the victim calmly embracing his death, and Larsson builds the tension with hints of past troubles, of religious issues, and parental abuse.There's a past here, a history that Rebecka has with the church. I'll admit to a prejudice against organized religion, so that colors what I think. The Catholic priests who abuse children and others, the preachers who abuse the trust of their congregation, and it's here in this story as well. The so-called Christianity that flies out the window as soon as desire rises up. Whether that desire is for power, money, lust, or fear.I've also got a built-in prejudice against von Post since I first encountered Larsson in her fifth book in this series, The Second Deadly Sin. He is the most incredibly disgusting jerk, and it's too much fun to read how disrespected he is, lol.Jeez, Måns is something of a jerk. Pulling her client out from under Rebecka. I'm not impressed with Sanna either. She wants so badly to keep her daughters and yet hasn't a clue or doesn't care enough to take care of them. She's such a weaselly immature, self-obsessed wimp! And she plays Rebecka like a virtuoso. I hate her passive-aggressive attacks on Rebecka. I just wanna smack her around. Then there are Sanna's parents. What a piece of work that father is! And there's some history they have against Rebecka too.Does this sound familiar?"Weak people are often drawn to the church. And people who want power over weak people are also drawn there."tSivving is an interesting character. He's warm and yet odd about how he lives in his house, an across-the-road neighbor to the older Martinssons. He has some lovely stories about her grandparents. About her grandfather Albert and his courtship of Theresia, how she won Albert's father's (Eric's) heart.The one problem I have with this story is Måns' interest in Rebecka. Larsson never makes this believable. In ANY way. As for Rebecka's acceptance…*eye roll*…gotta be that Scandinavian negativity. I dunno. I love Larsson's style. It's warm, cozy, and full of personalities. When you add in what we learn about Swedish culture and how different the police operate in Sweden, it simply becomes more fascinating, and Larsson keeps things much too interesting.The StoryHaving found her dead brother, Sanna Strandgård is terrified and begs Rebecka to come home, to represent her. To protect her children from her parents.It was Viktor’s death and revival that resurrected the churches around Kiruna, that revived the faith of the people. It was the church’s success that doomed the pastors’ families.It had been Rebecka’s love for God that sent her down the path to ruin.The CharactersRebecka Martinsson is a lawyer who specializes in tax law, working for Meijer & Ditzinger. She's inherited a share in her grandmother's house in Kurravaara, fifteen kilometers outside Kiruna. Uncle Affe and Inga-Lill hold the other share. Eric "Sivving" Fjällborg is her retired neighbor; Bella is his pointer bitch. Lena and Mats are his children; his wife, Maj-Lis died a few years ago. Mary Kuoppa keeps him in buns.Meijer & Ditzinger, the law firmMåns Wenngren is Rebecka's boss, a lawyer, and a partner with the law firm. He's also divorced with two sons, Johanne and Calle, and drinks too much. Madelene is his now ex-wife. Maria Taube is a fellow tax lawyer and friend. Sonia Berg is one of the secretaries.Law enforcement in KirunaInspector Anna-Maria Mella is usually team leader — when she's not being heavily pregnant; Inspector Sven-Erik Stålnacke is her partner and is supposed to be taking over during her leave. He also has a cat, Manne. Sergeant Tommy Rantakyrö and Inspector Fred Olsson are part of her team. Sonja works the switchboard.Simon Larsson is a crime scene photographer. The senior medical examiner is Lars Pohjanen; Anna Granlund is the autopsy technician.Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post has a problem with women in authority, heck, he just has a problem with women. He's an incompetent, attention-seeking jerk with delusions of competence. And the Swedish system appears to require a prosecutor to head investigative teams.Robert is Anna-Maria's husband and their children include Petter and Marcus.Viktor Strandgård, a.k.a., the Paradise Boy, is a well-known religious leader in Kiruna, mostly because he died and came back with a full report on life after death. His experience united three separate churches into one: The Source of All Our Strength. Sanna Strandgård is his sister. Sara and Lova are her daughters. Virku is their dog. Ronny Björnström is Sara's father; Sammy Andersson is Lova's. The Strandgård siblings' father, Olof, is abusive and a local politician with sway. Kristina is the cowed wife.The church, The Source of All Our StrengthThere are three pastors of the church: Thomas Söderberg was a pastor with the Mission Church; Gunnar Isaksson; and, Vesa Larsson, a former artist. Below them are five elders including Frans Zachrisson and Alf Hedman. Curt Bäckström is a hanger-on at the church and one of Sanna's admirers. Patrik Mattsson knows something. Ann-Gull Kyrö is the pastors' secretary.Thomas is married to Maja; Magdalena is her sister. They have two daughters: Rakel and Anna. Gunnar is married to Karin, and they have a daughter, Anna, and a son, Andreas. Astrid is Vesa's wife. Baloo is her undisciplined dog.Victory Print is the publishing company printing the books, pamphlets, and videotapes the Church sells.It was in Margareta Fransson's Religious Studies class that Nina Eriksson spoke up. It resulted in Viktor, Sanna, and Rebecka being part of the eleven at the Mission bible camp.The mediaAnders Grape is with Radio Sweden. Lena Westerberg is with TV3.The CoverThe cover is bright with snow and bare trees caught up in the haze. Somehow, splotches of footprints trail off into the distance through the sky.I have no idea about the title, Sun Storm, unless it’s, possibly, a reference to Jesus as the Son of God and a storm is raging over this church.
What is it with these Nordic writers? I've read Steig Larsson's 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Jussi Adler-Olsen's 'The Keeper of Lost Causes,' and now, 'Sun Storm,' by Asa Larsson. They really have quite a flair for building a suspenseful story with characters who are intriguing, flawed, and intensely credible. Although, I haven't felt compelled to pick up the sequels to 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,' I enjoyed Steig Larsson's style of writing. 'The Keeper of Lost Causes,' and 'Sun Storm,' have been, for me, more enjoyable. However, 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,' was my first venture into crime and suspense novels by Nordic authors, so perhaps it was the one on which 'I cut my teeth.' When 'Sun Storm,' opens up, I'm swept up in the 5 star literary movement of Asa Larsson's beautiful language. The first line, "When Viktor Strandgard dies it is not, in fact, for the first time," invokes weighty mysteries. As Viktor lies dying in the Crystal Church, he contemplates the Aurora Borealis through the roof's windows. "And as if his thoughts have touched her, she (the Aurora Borealis) stops for a second. Breaks her endless journey. Contemplates VViktor Strandgard with her cold winter eyes. Because he is as beautiful as an icon lying there, to tell the truth, with the dark blood like a halo round his long, fair, St. Lucia hair. He can't feel his legs anymore. He is getting drowsy. There is no pain." The language catches me up like music, a beautiful heartrending melody of prose poetry. Asa Larsson's protagonist, Rebecka Martinsson, is a tax lawyer, as was Asa Larsson in a former life. Rebecka is called upon by Sanna Strandgard, Viktor's sister to come and help Sanna with the situation. So Rebecka leaves her job in Stockholm to travel to Kiruna, her childhood home, to aid an old friend. Pregnant Inspector Anna-Maria Mella, and her colleague, Sven-Erik Stalnacke, probe the details of the crime. Populating the story also, are the three pastors of 'The source of All Our Strength' church and their wives, and Sanna's children, Sara and Lova. Asa Larsson animates the story greatly with these secondary characters. The climate of Kiruna, as the northern most city in Sweden, also becomes a character in the story. By describing their clothing, the snow, the cabins, and how they travel on sledges, the reader becomes seeped in the setting. Here's an example of Asa Larsson's narrative style as she describes the landscape. "As a child she had often traveled the whole way from Kiruna down to the village on her kick sledge. It was a happy memory. Especially in the late winter when the road was covered with a wonderful layer of thick, shining ice, and nobody spoiled it with sand, salt, or grit. The moon lit up the snow-covered forest around her. The snowdrifts along the sides of the road formed a frame." Beautiful. This book has moments of profound greatness and beauty, and rates a 4.5. One critique of the story is that they're too many characters and that it's difficult to remember who's who because the names are so different. At the beginning of the story, when the characters are introduced, it is more challenging, but as the reader settles into the story, the extra work required to remember who Thomas, Vesa, Gunnar, Sven-Erik, and other Nordic characters are is well rewarded.
Do You like book Sun Storm (2006)?
Primo capitolo della serie di Rebecka Martinsson, che al momento consta di cinque volumi.Scoperta attraverso il saggio che ho recensito pochi giorni fa (Swedish Crime Fiction), devo dire che al momento è la scrittrice di gialli che più corrisponde ai miei gusti. La questione delle sette religiose nel nord della Svezia mi affascinava da diverso tempo ormai, quindi il setting della storia già mi era congeniale.Dal romanzo si evince facilmente che Åsa nutre come me una forte passione per i cani ed ha un debole per Elvis, quindi non poteva non nascere un amore tra me e lei. Rispetto alla Läckberg (che non apprezzo affatto) la presenza del quotidiano, della vita familiare è sì presente, però senza finire nello stucchevole, senza finire in un giallo - chick-lit. Fino ad ora per me il Giallo con la G maiuscola era solo uno: Sherlock Holmes, di cui ho il Mammut Newton Compton che sorseggio lentamente per non arrivare troppo presto alla fine. Sherlock è il personaggio con cui mi piace trascorrere brevi momenti nella mia immaginazione e che ricordo sempre con un tuffo al cuore.La Fossum anche mi aveva piacevolmente sorpreso sul momento, però poi non abbastanza da leggere altri suoi libri.Åsa invece davvero mi ha catturata, dimostrandomi che anche i gialli nordici possono avere meriti letterari. Ho visto tuttavia che ci sono nei suoi confronti pareri molto contrastanti, chi le dà cinque stelle e chi una sola. O la si ama o la si odia insomma. A voi accettare la sfida o meno.
—Tassia
There probably is a bit too much exposition. But if you can't remember when you last got more than about 5 hours sleep, that is, frankly, absolutely fine. You'd miss anything more subtle. Unless, possibly, you're the ghost of Maggie Thatcher.Can't put my finger on why, but I found this a little more clumsy and infodumping than Anne Holt. This one, in fairness, is a first novel and I've only read Holt's later books.The crime is a typically bizarre and fantastical event - the murder and dismemberment of a beautiful man who was the figurehead of a cultish evangelical-type church in the far north of Sweden. (The first chapter tells us that he was unconscious or dead before the really gory stuff happened, which makes it somewhat less horrible. There also isn't a huge amount of detail about the mutilation and we hear about how hideous it is more via living characters' reactions than through descriptions of the corpse.) It's common for murder mysteries to have a female victim who's portrayed as alluring; this is the first time I can recall one featuring a man who's considered hot by one or more characters (also inaccessible and ethereal due to his religious asceticism). Making it even more of a role reversal, he was once romantically rejected by the central detective characters, Stockholm lawyer Rebecka Martinsson, when they were both small-town teenagers.One of the main reasons I'm reading these things, aside from the armchair tourism, is for the normal-working-life aspect of the investigators and supporting characters, it's mostly about work rather than the endless cooking and ruminating scenes that populate the mundane side of litfic, and seem somehow less realistic in terms of what takes up the headspace of someone who actually has a job. Thrillers and crime fiction are mostly about people doing stuff, literary fiction about thinking. (Sometimes you want a break from all that second-hand thinking.)Some aspects of the investigators' private lives may be a little soapy, but there is something normal about them - in massive contrast to the crimes. That aspect I'm less keen on - though at least their removal from reality must make them less threatening to many readers. Whilst physically possible, they seem not a great deal more realistic than wizards and ghosts - something I hadn't quite realised before this year, not having read much crime fiction in book form since my teens, and which I'm surprised isn't pointed out more often. The action-thriller denouement of The Savage Altar was great fun - however I have a lot of respect for the storylines featuring grubby regional news kind of crimes in the Danish series Unit One; I also like social realism in an easily readable form alongside vicarious travel. It's understandable that some reviewers don't much like Rebecka: she snaps at people frequently, she's irritable about 70% of the time, spends another 10% strongarming situations her way by quoting legislation, and if someone wants to compliment her, they call her 'fierce'. But "nice cop" DI Anna-Maria Mella is also there as a balancing force in the narrative. (It's interesting to have two parallel investigations going on where the author doesn't favour one character over the other, this is no Holmes v LeStrade setup although Martinsson doesn't see it that way.) Like Sarah Lund, Martinsson reminds me of my mother as I saw her when I was a kid, not in a way that's weird or uncomfortable, but enough that on a deep level she strikes me as unusually realistic because of a primal sense that "that's what grownups are really like", especially as regards work and dealing with people in public. Though of course, a lot of them aren't. Four stars because I enjoyed its cheesy B-movie imperfections and excellent showdown. Having ended up with three of this series unread - 2 & 3 on special offer, got 1 to start in the right place - I'm really looking forward to reading about Martinsson and Mella again (which is more than I could say for Anne Holt's Johanne Vik, whose series I started in the same way). I suspected that I'd find the sort of female characters I wanted to hear about in crime novels more than I did in litfic - where the emphasis is on what they're doing, not a set of ideas about Being A Woman that I'm expected to relate to but don't - and here I was right. And four stars proudly because I don't want to modify based on 'perceived quality' in a nod to snobbery. Optional rant under spoiler tag. (view spoiler)[At the moment I'm sick of sustained posts about humourless and unapologetic snobbery and especially the promotion of it on Goodreads as something to grow into, not out of. (Me aged 18 would have fit in with it much better...) Yes, reading more can refine taste, and that's fine but what happened to all the other broadening of human understanding and wisdom that reading allegedly promotes? If a hobby runner said that anyone who couldn't run a 10k in under 40 mins was an embarrassing weakling, it would be perfectly obvious to people on here what that looked like. That they weren't actually diminished by others' slowness, and that they were unnecessarily dismissive, by applying one measure of worth that's irrelevant to many, of people who never had an ability they happened to have, of those who had it latently but preferred to or had to deploy their energies elsewhere, and those who no longer could, temporarily or permanently. However, I shall still roll my eyes at those who are so PC that they believe that the words 'idiot' or 'stupid' should be excised from one's vocabulary. (hide spoiler)]
—Antonomasia
I've been on a Scandinavian writers' kick since I read and fell hard for 'Out Stealing Horses,' by Per Petterson last August. After reading all three of Petterson's books, (reviewing so far only the first,) I turned to the genre which Nordic writers seem to dominate these days---the suspense novel. A recent trip to Iceland prompted me to pick up first 'Voices,' by Arnaldur Indridason, which I intend later to write about, but will just say for now that it is a subject on which I am emphatically tepid. Next, I turned to Stieg Larsson's 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,'which, with his 'Girl Who Played with Fire,' I praised highly here. Mari Jungstedts's three Anders Knutas thrillers came next---reviews to appear, but I've got to write them first, don't I?I've just now finished Asa Larsson's 'The Sun Storm,' and felt it was just too good to push aside to write about at some later, maybe neverish, time.Of course, YOU don't want to read about someone who's had his eyes gouged out (and that was the least of his worries), nor do you want to read about a pack of crazed Swedish fundamentalist Christians, but don't let that stop you from picking up this book. It was not the dream of my lifetime to read about those things, either. But the novel opens with a stunning description of the aurora borealis and works its way past the blood and gore to characters and a plot that gain in strength and lucidity and momentum to the extent that I couldn't put 'Sun Storm' down. This is Asa Larsson's first novel and it certainly isn't perfectly written. Its worst moments are better than many successful writers' best ones, though. If you want more info on the plot and things, you'll have to look elsewhere. I'll just say that in Rebecka Martinsson I found the best female protagonist I've encountered in a very long time. Larsson has a profound understanding of the human psyche and a powerful way of writing about it. It's not an easy book to read, but you've guessed that. Okay, but read it anyway. I've just ordered the sequel.
—Laura
