Theodor Kallifatides

One of the most beautiful books I can remember reading, back in the early 80's, was written by Theodor Kallifatides. Kallifatides was born in Greece in 1938, but came to Sweden in 1964. So it's all the more impressive that he ranks among the very best writers in Sweden. When I realised that he had published three crime novels I knew I had to read them.

Kallifatides has chosen a female lead character. Kristina Vendel is 33 years old and has a background as a philosophy student. Her team consists of one other female, Maria Valetieri, and two male officers, Thomas Roth and Östen Nilsson. These four characters compliment each other beautifully - both in their professional roles but also with their ages and background stories. These characters are all complex and interesting, as are their lives. They also develop and show new sides of themselves through the three books I have read.

The writer has also chosen the perfect setting for his police department. Huddinge is a suburb of Stockholm that encompasses a variety of living standards and life styles. A shopping centre, a university hospital, a commuter train to and from Stockholm, council estates, terraced houses, bungalows and even posh villas - you can find it all here. And it follows that you can find all kinds of people here as well.

The plot lines in these three books are quite varied and allows for destinies from different stations in life to be intertwined. The first book touches both on the import of prostitutes from Eastern Europe and members of high society. The second book starts off with the crash of a small propeller plane, works through finding the common denominator between the five passengers and identifying the sixth passenger to organ theft. The third book features a professional killer and takes the reader to both the horse race track and the Nobel Prize Award ceremony.

There is nothing obviously off kilter with these plot lines or the crimes depicted in these books. But the crimes do seem to be there more to allow the writer to express the moral dilemmas that can be facing us as humans today. These books are more about love, lost and found, and lust. What we are willing to do or overlook for the sake of love or lust. They are about the fine line between love and hate, or how the same person can be capable of both utter coldness and complete love depending on the situation or people involved.

I would not hesitate to recommend anyone to read these books, especially in Swedish, but I would not recommend them as good crime novels. Rather to people interested in exploring other people's minds and hearts and experiencing different view points on right and wrong, love and hate.

This series contains, in chronological order:

Ett enkelt brott - A Simple Crime (Harvell Press)

Den sjätte passageraren - The Sixth Passenger (Harvell Press)

I hennes blick - Not yet published in English