Journey to the End of the World by Henning Mankell

15 year old Joel Gustafson lives with his lumberjack father Samuel in the far north of Sweden, so far north that it snows on his graduation day in June.  Joel cooks for his father, his mother Mummy Jenny left when he was only a baby.   Samuel and Joel spend hours poring over world maps together dreaming of this time Joel will be old enough to leave school and sign on as a sailor, and they can sail away from the cold north together.  But then a letter for Samuel arrives telling him where Mummy Jenny is and the pair take an overnight train journey south to Stockholm to find her.  Joel's life begins to shift and change, Joel is coming of age, Samuel is ageing and the docks and the ships and sea are close at hand.

At first I found the writing in this story quite stilted and alien but by the end I was fully engaged.  Mankell's story of a boy stepping out into the world and the aching sadness of the narrative is slow burning but memorable.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson (AUDIO)

AZ: "Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves".  Really well written and atmospheric, evocative of the island nature of Sweden

The Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell

Another brilliantly written thriller, even more so in that the reader is, towards the end, ahead of the detective becuase of his limitations: AZ: "Herbert Molin, a retired police officer, lives alone in a remote cottage in northern Sweden. Two things seem to consume him; his passion for the tango, and an obsession with the "demons" he believes to be pursuing him. Early one morning shots shatter Molin's windows...by the time his body is found it is almost unrecognisable. Stefan Lindman is another off-the-job police officer. On extended sick leave due to having cancer of the tongue, Lindman hears about the murder of his former colleague and, in a bid to take his mind off his own problems, decides to investigate. As his investigation becomes increasingly complex, it is with both horror and disbelief that Lindman uncovers links to a global web of neo-Nazi activity."