Hot Tempers, Cold Climate

Caroline Cummins’ combined review of two new crime novels from Swedish writing stars--Torso, by Helene Tursten, and Sun Storm, by Åsa Larsson--was posted this morning in January Magazine. You can read her fine critique here. Cummins opines that Torso, which springs from the discovery of a tattooed torso on a beach, and incorporates both sexual predation and necrophilia in its plot, “matches its predecessor, Detective Inspector Huss (2003), in tone and quality.” Of Sun Storm, which finds a Stockholm tax lawyer plumbing the murder of a charismatic young preacher, Cummins writes: “Purple though this story might be--the preacher, mutilated in fearsome fashion, had started a cult, and whispers of sexual deviation are everywhere--Larsson gets her snowball rolling from the book’s first page and doesn’t let up until she’s built a solid, if slightly ludicrous, snowman of a novel.”