Prime Cases of Scandi Crime

Drawing from what is described as a “significantly increased number of entries,” organizers of the annual Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year have developed their longlist of nominees for 2023. They are:

• The Shadow Murders, by Jussi Adler-Olsen,
translated by William Frost (Denmark, Quercus)
• Death in Summer, by Lina Areklew,
translated by Tara F Chace (Sweden, Canelo Crime)
• Little Drummer, by Kjell Ola Dahl,
translated by Don Bartlett (Norway, Orenda)
• Femicide, by Pascal Engma,
translated by Michael Gallagher (Sweden, Legend Press)
• The Corpse Flower, by Anne Mette Hancock,
translated by Tara F. Chace (Denmark, Swift Press)
• Winter Water, by Susanne Jansson,
translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles (Sweden, Hodder & Stoughton)
• 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)
• Codename Faust, by Gustaf Skördeman,
translated by Ian Giles (Sweden, Zaffre)
• Bitter Flowers, by Gunnar Staalesen,
translated by Don Bartlett (Norway, Orenda)

As a press notice explains, “both large and small publishers are represented on the longlist, with Orenda Books leading with three entries, and the breakdown by country is Sweden (5), Denmark (2), Norway (2), Finland (1), Iceland (1) and Switzerland (1), with translators Don Bartlett and Tara F. Chace having translated two entries each.” A fine representation of last year’s works in this field.

A shortlist of contenders is set to be announced on September 7.

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 had died the year before that.