Sydney To Sweden Gripping Yarns From

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday June 16, 2007

Reviewed by Sue Turnbull, Sue Turnbull is the Herald's chief crime reviewer.

IN THE APTLY titled Frantic (Macmillan, $32.95), former ambulance officer Katherine Howell has written an adrenaline rush of a thriller. It is about a female paramedic in Sydney and is as addictive as it is exhausting; I was burnt out just reading it.

Sophie Phillips is good at her job. Just as well. In the first 50 pages she has to deal with an armed bank robbery, a disastrous home birth and a car accident. As if that wasn't enough, she also has to cope with a surly policeman husband who may or may not be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Or is it guilt? Police corruption abounds and it's hard to know who to trust. Sophie doesn't even trust herself sometimes.

When her husband is shot and their small child abducted, Sophie goes into hyperdrive conducting her own frantic search while Detective Ella Marconi ponders the possibilities with rather more sangfroid. The narrative focus oscillates between the two women as they converge on the mystery of the child's disappearance as the clock ticks. Every section is prefaced by the time and date just in case the reader is losing momentum.

This is a book you don't so much read as devour. There's little time for interiority. If this book were a TV series it would look like 24 and, like 24, there would probably be a sequel already in production. Apparently there is. It's called Panic, and I can't wait to do it again.

The Savage Altar (Viking, $29.95), on the other hand, is more measured, although no less affecting. First published in Sweden in 2003, it won that country's Best First Crime Novel Award for author Asa Larsson, whose second book featuring tax lawyer Rebecka Martinsson is due out next year.

If the prospect of a crime novel featuring a Swedish tax lawyer doesn't sound too promising, let me reassure you that The Savage Altar is both intriguing and riveting. Set in far north Sweden it takes us into the world of religious fervour and dysfunctional families played out under the shimmering lights of the aurora borealis.

It all begins with the mutilated body of the charismatic Viktor Strandgard, alias the Paradise Boy, discovered in the central aisle of the magnificent Crystal Church. This architecturally improbable structure, complete with a glass ceiling enabling a wary eye to be kept on the heavens, is the booming centre of a religious revivalist movement. It's managed by three creepy pastors and funded largely from the proceeds of Viktor's best-selling book about a brief sojourn with God occasioned by a near-fatal bicycle accident.

Summoned by Viktor's sister, who is a suspect in his murder, Rebecka returns to her remote home town where the skeletons jostle for elbow room in the closet. And so begin the flashbacks as Rebecka rediscovers why she left home in the first place.

Meanwhile, heavily pregnant Inspector Anna-Maria Mella trudges through the sub-arctic winter to assist in the investigation in a dogged and unflappable manner reminiscent of Frances McDormand's wonderful policewoman, Marge Gunderson, in the Coen brothers' film Fargo. One of the best things about this book are the strong, no-nonsense female characters.

It's hard to know with a translation just how good the prose of the original might be, but Marlene Delargy appears to have done an excellent job. From the translation of a Swedish poem with which the book opens, to the rendition of convincing Swedish cop-speak, this is a beautifully executed book that gathers momentum as it toboggans towards a dramatic conclusion in the snow. Henning Mankell may not be the only cunning Swede on the block.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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