The 3 best books by the great Mari Jungstedt

The truth is that it is a pleasure to see how many of the great firms of the black genre are already authors from here and there. Female writers addressing their dark narratives around the world of crime with absolute magnetism, with that tension on the cases, the psyche of the criminal, the psychological tension of the victims or the investigators; or even that gloomy harmonious whole that brings everything together. And it is no longer relevant that this is the case, but it was not so normal to find black genre narrators not so many years ago.

In the case of Mari jungstedtWith her Nordic ancestry, she can already be considered as one of the great ladies of the northernmost noir exported all over the world. Mari has nothing to envy Camilla Lackberg o Karin Fossum, to name two very well-known writers from those parts ...

It is true that, as in any other genre, each one contributes its imprint, its characters, its scenery. And the Jungstedt thing always ends up being a race against time towards the resolution of the crime.

In most cases we are guided by the controversial inspector Knutas, capable of functioning with professionalism in any environment, no matter how disturbing it may be, although also capable of the most untimely action when the confusion inherent to the sinister proposal of the criminal on duty manages to confuse them to focus them on false leads or as part of that insane game in the one in which the murderer's ego challenges his pursuers.

In the middle of the Baltic Sea, the island of Gotland monopolizes a large part of Mari's narratives. The island, its tourist capital Visby and its surroundings become the epicenter of a thousand and one pending issues between crime and justice, generating an atmosphere between idyllic and claustrophobic, a suggestive contrast that abounds in this magical recreation of the real location made already complete scenario.

Top 3 Recommended Novels by Mari Jungstedt

Before the clouds come

From the outset Andalusia is not that it is very noir. But therein lies the grace of the writer on duty to find chiaroscuro despite the dazzling light of Malaga. And it often happens that the person who can best reveal these unknown sides to us is someone who comes from outside and observes with new eyes. The initial estrangement can arouse both fascination and unsuspected concerns, as occurs in this novel...

On a misty afternoon, four tourists travel to Ronda to admire the Puente Nuevo, a construction nearly a hundred meters high. Due to bad weather, three of them decide to return to the hotel. Florián Vega, a prosecutor from Malaga, is left alone to take photos, while his Swedish wife, Marianne, and her friends wait for him for hours.

When the next day his body is found destroyed in a ravine, they assign the case to Inspector Héctor Correa, Homicide Investigator of the Malaga Provincial Police Station. In order to question the witnesses, he requests the collaboration of Lisa Hagel, a Swedish translator who has just settled in a town in Malaga. Together they will delve into the case while trying to deal with their own emotional baggage.

Before the clouds come

On the dark side of the moon

More Malaga and more surprising noir, as if arrived in a cold current from the northernmost Europe to the last moments in the south of the continent, where the Iberian Peninsula serves as shelter, vacation and from Mari, a gloomy end for travelers in search of retreats, retirements and peace…

On a freezing New Year's Day, a loving couple is found murdered in a jacuzzi on a lonely farm in Ångermanland, northern Sweden. He is Swedish, she is Spanish. They both lived in Malaga and had decided to spend a few days of rest in that idyllic enclave. The most striking thing about the event is the weapon chosen by the murderer, who shot arrows at them with a bow. Although the first suspicions point towards the owner of a nightclub in Puerto Banús, Inspector Héctor Correa, responsible for the investigation in Spain, travels to the crime scene to gather more information. This time, he will also have the help of Lisa Hagel.

On the dark side of the moon

No one has seen it

For a saga to be conformed as such, the first novel must necessarily be a fascinating story, exciting in its intrigue, with a terrifying point in its proposal. From the outset the necessary location, the location of Gotland as the summer paradise of so many Swedes (or any other tourists who want to get lost in this fascinating island).

When that long-awaited summer looms, Helena returns from Stockholm to remember her happy days of childhood and youth. Only now he is not so young and his relationship with his former childhood friends takes on other very different shades. The days of back and forth love affairs are over and Helena, considering that returning to Gotland is to relive what is no longer, is carried away by her youthful spirit and dances with her friend Kristian as if the years had not passed.

Per watches her with a latent visceral hatred. The next day Helena will be dead and the beast seems to have indulged in debauchery as Frida, Helena's childhood friend, dies shortly after. The appearance of the then unknown Inspector Knutas opens us to the entire saga to come. On this first occasion, good old Anders Knutas must unravel an emotional network that can continue to devastate everything ...

No one has seen it

Other recommended books by Mari Jungstedt

You are not alone

Every suspense author can find a great plot support in childhood fears turned into phobias that are difficult to address. If you know how to handle the matter, you end up composing a psychological thriller as a mosaic of an imaginary shared by millions of potential readers.

Because phobias have a morbid point when they are projected towards others, towards those characters faced with the same terrors that can paralyze us. Thus we find reading tension and a longing for a placebo and for improvement in the possible amiable final solution for some protagonists plunged into the darkness of their own fears.

Mari jungstedt, presented exclusively to Spanish readers by Maeva Editorial for over a decade now, plays those keys like the virtuoso pianist of the most sinister melodies. A very feminine virtuosity when it comes to Nordic crime fiction ... (I refer to Karin Fossum, Camilla Lackberg or Asa Larsson).

On this occasion, under that title converted into a sentence of the implicit thriller, she invites us to take the ferry to the island of Gotland, where she herself spends the summer and where she once again locates the corresponding plot, taking advantage of the claustrophobic notion of an island as large as it is lonely in middle of the Baltic.

The plot focuses on the discovery of the whereabouts of two missing girls, but the no less intense personal ramification of an already recurring Anders Knutas and the sub-inspector Karin Jacobsson, both involved in a particular relationship that also leads them to the nihilistic hells of the depression, offers the novel a human counterweight as rarely occurs in current crime novels.

Karin feels strong and encouraged to discern the girls' horrifying case and still stands firm while Anders tries to gain a foothold in that dark lagoon in his mind. But maybe it's just a façade, an appearance, Karin's need to think that she has everything under control and that she can act quickly so that the girls don't suffer any harm and so that Anders finally gets out of the maddening labyrinth of depression. On the other side of Karin's reality, unbeknownst to her, there is only evil. Only that visiting that other side, the monstrous reflection of the world, cannot leave anyone unscathed.

You are not alone

No one has heard

Once again, the maxim that the second parts were never good is blown up. And it is that when a writer like Mari Jungstedt finds a narrative vein, her imagination takes off towards a thousand assumptions. The island of Gotland had already been established as the nucleus of that evil in which we ended up becoming familiar with the environment, sharing with neighbors and strangers, getting to know any area of ​​the island and discovering the ideal moment to kill ...

The role of journalist Johan Berg, who already appeared in the first installment "Nobody Has Seen" acquires the value of the essential. He will be in charge of providing all the precise information, Watson mode, so that Knutas (Sherlock Holmes) is tying the cases of the murder of a depraved photographer and what appears to the kidnapping, or something else, of a teenager named Fanny about whose image the photographer had compromising snapshots.

Only, probably what seems like an obvious search for faster justice could end up being a resounding error with dire consequences ...

No one has heard

the trails of darkness

In the fourteenth novel in the Gotland series, Anders and Karin must put aside their emotional crisis to solve the murder of a professor with a blameless life.

One of the most popular events is about to start, the celebration of the Gotland Runt, the offshore sailing regatta that starts from Stockholm and has Gotland as its destination. One of the boats is forced to take shelter in Bandlund Bay due to bad weather, but instead of calm, the crew finds a dead man on the shore, gagged and with a fractured skull.

Inspector Anders Knutas and Deputy Inspector Karin Jacobsson, despite having unresolved issues in their romantic relationship, are forced to work together to find out the circumstances of this violent death. And they will discover that in all lives there are nooks and crannies that can harbor darkness

the trails of darkness

I don't lose sight of you

Anything can happen in the Gotland series. Because the criminal concert that he sings in this series can overwhelm us in any direction. Confusion and eagerness to know the foundation of the ominous. As always from the hand of our favorite researchers…

The island of Lilla Karlsö is calm after the tourist season and a long, hot summer. A group of college students spend the weekend on the arid and lonely island before the course begins, but only one girl returns alive. The multiple murder shocks the entire country and panic spreads throughout the university. Are the students the target of the killer or were they simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? Anders Knutas and Karin Jacobsson face this new case while their lives take an unexpected turn.

I don't lose sight of you
5/5 - (10 votes)

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