Heralded as a bright new star among the Scandi Noir constellation, Pascal Engman has already become a huge success at home – ‘the bestselling Swedish crime novelist of his generation’ – and in many translations, before we Anglophones get to sample his wares.
Femicide (Råttkungen in Sweden) is Engman’s third of six novels, the second to star Detective Vanessa Frank and her informant Nicholas Paredes, and Engman’s first book to be translated into English. When a young woman is found murdered in her Stockholm apartment, the prime suspect is clear: her violent ex who’d just been released from prison. But is something else going on? A violent sexual assault on a young journalist, the murder of a prominent TV celebrity’s lover, a homeless couple trying to find some peace among shattered lives, a rising incel movement that wants to weaponise the ‘gender war’.
Engman finely balances a page-whirring storyline with some nuanced characters and an exploration of the darker side of the internet, where misogyny festers and metastasizes. Femicide takes readers into some dark places and builds to a bold conclusion, but never feels bleak, as it’s laced with humanity and some hope.
Engman is definitely a storyteller to watch, and read, and hopefully more of his books will soon be available for us all.
Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORPascal Engman, b. 1986, is a Swedish author and journalist.
Following the publication of his first book The Patriots, in 2017, he has since become the best-selling Swedish crime novelist of his generation.
After the stand-alone debut novel, Engman began writing a series about police detective Vanessa Frank, with books Tierra Del Fuego (2018), Femicide (2019), and the upcoming title The Widows, to be published in fall 2020. The Vanessa Frank series is sold in over 20 countries and has been translated into various languages, among them Spanish, Italian, German and Polish.
Before beginning his authorship, Engman was a journalist at Swedish evening newspaper Expressen, and one of their most high-profile reporters. In the Vanessa Frank series, he explores extreme fringes of society, such as right-wing nationalists, incels and islamists. Themes such as class and identity are recurrent in Engman’s books.
0 Comments