Endangered Women Thriller Wins Petrona

Swedish journalist-turned-fictionist Pascal Engman’s Femicide (Legend Press, 2022), translated by Michael Gallagher, has won the 2023 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. A press release notes that “Engman will receive a trophy, and both the author and translator will receive a cash prize.”

The statement from Petrona judges describes Engman’s book as “a page-turning, absorbing and uncomfortable Swedish thriller. Femicide tells of a young woman, Emilie, who is found murdered in her Stockholm apartment in the same week that her violent ex-boyfriend is released from prison. Detective Vanessa Frank is assigned the case. Meanwhile, we hear the story of young journalist Jasmina, the survivor of a recent, severe sexual assault. Author Pascal Engman dives into the world of incels through Tom, a very believable character who is part of a weaponised gender war brought about by, amongst other things, misguided hatred, feelings of being ignored by society, and sexual frustration. Femicide comes to a pinnacle as the attacks against women escalate on a huge scale.”

Also shortlisted for this year’s Petrona were The Corpse Flower, by Anne Mette Hancock, translated by Tara F. Chace (Denmark, Swift Press); The Axe Woman, by Håkan Nesser, translated by Sarah Death (Sweden, Mantle); Land of Snow and Ashes, by Petra Rautiainen, translated by David Hackston (Finland, Pushkin Press); Kalmann, by Joachim B. Schmidt, translated by Jamie Lee Searle (Switzerland, Bitter Lemon Press); Red as Blood, by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, translated by Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda); and Bitter Flowers, by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett (Norway, Orenda).

The Petrona Award, established back in 2013, takes its name from the blog operated by Maxine Clarke, a British editor and “champion of Scandinavian crime fiction,” who’d died the year before that. As award organizers explain, “The Petrona Award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia, and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you wonder why you’ve heard Pascal Engman’s name recently, it’s because he has been caught up in the ghostwriting controversy surrounding fellow Swedish writer Camilla Läckberg.