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Danish Crime Writers

The Danish crime writers are not nearly as well known as their Swedish colleagues. It is hard to know why, but they are fewer and less well-known, for some or other reason.

The Danish crime writers that publish their books internationally are (to the best of our knowledge - please correct any mistakes): Erik Amdrup, Sara Blædel, Anders Bodelsen, Leif Davidsen, Christian Dorph, Elsebeth Egholm, Anders Bodelsen, Jonas Bruun, Gretelise Holm, Christian Jungersen, Michael Larsen, Henning Mortensen, Torben Nielsen, Simon Pasternak, Hans Scherfig, Dan Turèll and Inger Wolf.

Anders Bodelsen, Leif Davidsen, Christian Jungersen, Michael Larsen and Torben Nielsen have been translated to English. Some would also count Peder Hoeg's international bestselling novel Smilla's Sense of Snow as a crime book.

Lime's Photograph, by Leif Davidsen

Lime's Photograph is a thriller with a paparazzo - a lone wolf - as the main character. His name is Peter Lime. He leads a charmed life. "I made my living from today's narcissism and insatiable appetite for gossip. I was the man sitting in the middle of the global Lime's Photograph, by Leif Davidsenvillage square, passing on gossip about the famous." He has just successfully photographed a Spanish minister in a compromising position with a beautiful young Italian actress. So now he stands to make a lot of money from these pictures. Also, he is married to a woman he is very much in love with and has a daughter.

However, his whole life starts to unravel when he is arrested for the pictures. While imprisoned his home is destroyed in an explosion. Lime - an intriguing character who is a weak, but handsome man and whose weakness is drink.- must discover who wants him dead and why. Will he be able to get on with his life after the tragedy?

It's all in Lime's Photograph: the hippie movement of the 60's, the cold war, the socialist movement, the death of Franco, the KGB, the Stasi, the ETA, the IRA, the EU, the fall of the Berlin wall, the re-unification of Germany, bullfighting, globalization. It's a very European story, and takes place in Spain for the most part, but with some parts happening in Copenhagen, Berlin and Moscow.

Leif Davidsen transports the reader through Lime's various trips through the Basque, Spanish and Danish countryside, and back in time to the radical left of 1970's, the Berlin Wall coming down at the end of the 1980's, and the glamorous life of the 1990's. Lime's Photograph is filled with nice philosophizing and occasional ruminations: "If you live by the media, you die by the media. Either abruptly, or that slow, painful death, when no one points the viewfinder at you any more. When you're no longer a story, just a memory."

In Lime's Photograph, Leif Davidsen has written a compelling and fascinating tale, and the book is well-written, even though Davidsen occationally gets bogged down in details. Leif Davidsen's characters in Lime's Photograph come across as real people. Lime's Photograph is interesting, exciting, and has lots of action. It is a great thriller!

Also by Leif Davidsen: The Serbian Dane (Eurocrime).

Order from amazon UK: Lime's Photograph.

The Serbian Dane, by Leif Davidsen

Leif Davidsen is a well-known Danish author of thrillers. Many of his books have been translated into other languages, and The Serbian Dane has been translated to English, French, German, Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian. It was awarded the prize for best fiction book by the book club "De 12 bøger" in 1997.

The Serbian Dane, by Leif DavidsenIranian mullahs have issued a fatwa for an internationally acclaimed writer by offering a four million dollar reward to the person who carries out her death sentence. The writer has been invited to Copenhagen by a Danish daily newspaper to speak at an event, and the Danish Secret Service is put in charge of protecting her. Per Toftlund, a security specialist, is in charge.

The main person in The Serbian Dane is Vuk, a young Bosnian Serb who was born and grew up in Denmark. Vuk's past is slowly revealed to us as he wanders around Copenhagen, surprised by the changes that occurred during the short number of years that he was away. Vuk contacts one of his childhood friends, and more of his past is revealed, in particular his traumatic experiences in ex-Yugoslavia. We finally begin to understand why Vuk is the way he is.

Davidsen is a precise and good storyteller. He has a wonderful sense of timing. And his decriptions of Danish politicians and Danish media are superb - as a journalist he knows what he is talking about.

Also, the story contains a broken marriage and a beautiful love story. It has it all! The Serbian Dane is cracking thriller!

Order from amazon UK: The Serbian Dane (Eurocrime) by Leif Davidsen.

The Exception, by Christian Jungersen

This is an ambitious novel. The Exception deals, at the macro level, with a horrifying subject — genocide. The Exception, by Christian Jungersen At the micro level it deals with blame, harassment, and psychological warfare in an office. The action takes place in Copenhagen’s Danish Center for Information on Genocide. Its mission is “to collect data about genocide and make it available, both in Denmark and abroad, to researchers, politicians, aid organizations, and other interested parties.”

The center’s staff compiles and organizes documents and books about these subjects. They also write papers, prepare exhibitions, organize conferences, and assist researchers. Then one day, two of the employees receive anonymous death threats by e-mail. It initially seems plausible that they are being threatened by some enraged neo-Nazi, a war criminal on the run, or some such person. Gradually suspicion falls on the colleagues instead.

The quiet office turns, with four people working in it, into a paranoid theater of warfare, with shifting antagonisms and alliances. They engage in a game of psychological warfare that turns deadly.Focus is turned towards the examination of evil at the workplace. Malene, Iben, and Camilla decide to gang up on Anne-Lise and they make her life unbearable.

The Exception is a book of five hundred pages. Sometimes it feels a little too long, sometimes a little to repetitious, and sometimes a little too detailed. All of the characters have deeply realized back stories, ambitions and pains. And using flashbacks and alternating chapters, Jungersen tells the story from various points of view. A little more economy in the composition would maybe have served the purpose of telling the story better.

However, The Exception is a provocative book and explores significant issues. It raises many questions it never fully answers. Does evil reside equally in everyone? What is the role played by individual's traits and outlooks?

Order The Exception by Christian Jungersen from amazon UK.
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