A profoundly moving, deliciously suspenseful novel about an American grandfather and a newly orphaned boy racing across the Norwegian wilderness, fleeing demons both real and imagined.

Since the late 1960s, the novels of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck detective series, along with the works of Henning Mankell, Håkan Nesser and Stieg Larsson, have sparked an explosion of Nordic crime fiction—grim police procedurals treating urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the contemporary world. Steeped in noir techniques and viewpoints, many of these novels are reaching international audiences through film and television adaptations. This reference guide introduces the world of Nordic crime fiction to English–speaking readers. Caught between the demands of conscience and societal strictures, the detectives in these stories—like the heroes of Norse mythology—know that they and their world must perish, but fight on regardless of cost. At a time of bleak eventualities, Nordic crime fiction interprets the bitter end as a celebration of the indomitable human spirit.

A coming-of-age story set during the rising tide of World War II, How to Find Your Way in the Dark follows Sheldon Horowitz from his humble start in a cabin in rural Massachusetts, through the trauma of his father's murder and the murky experience of assimilation in Hartford, Connecticut, to the birth of stand-up comedy in the Catskills--all while he and his friends are beset by anti-Semitic neighbors, employers, and criminals.

“A compelling combination of literate storytelling and action-packed thriller laced with humor.” — Library Journal (starred review) Finalist for the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year 1991: One hundred miles from the Kuwaiti border, Thomas Benton meets Arwood Hobbes. Benton is a British journalist who reports from war zones in part to avoid his lackluster marriage and a daughter he loves but cannot connect with; Arwood is an American private who might be an insufferable ignoramus or might be a genuine lunatic with a death wish—it's hard to tell. Desert Storm is over, peace has been declared, but as they argue about whether it makes sense to cross the nearest border in search of an ice cream, they become embroiled in a horrific attack in which a young local girl in a green dress is killed as they are trying to protect her. The two men walk away into their respective lives. But something has cracked for them both. Twenty-two years later, in another place, in another war, they meet again and are offered an unlikely opportunity to redeem themselves when that same girl in green is found alive and in need of salvation. Or is she? “Swift, gripping, and mined with surprises…Arwood Hobbes is as intriguing an operative as Graham Greene's quiet American, but without the quiet.”—David Shafer, author of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot “[A] stellar, electrifying story with a knockout ending.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A penetrating, poetic, and unexpectedly disarming book about the ageless conflict in the Middle East.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A Catch-22 for the twenty-first century.”—Madison Smartt Bell, National Book Award finalist and author of All Souls' Rising