The Savage Altar

Scandinavia: land of violent psychopathic killers who are hunted down by detectives with disintegrating home lives or miserable pasts (or both).

Given the number of Scandinavian crime novels currently being translated into English, one could be forgiven for choosing the second description as the correct one. Bookshop crime sections now feature a veritable European Community of writers, Scandinavians prominent among them: Henning Mankell and Karin Fossum are probably the best known, but a host of others are building reputations in the UK and beyond: Ake Edwardsson, Arnaldur Indridason, Hakan Nesser, Jan Costin Wagner and Matti Joensuu to name a few, as well as the reissue of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s classic Martin Beck series from the 1960s.

Now Viking has published Asa Larsson’s The Savage Altar, the first of six books about Stockholm tax lawyer Rebecka Martinsson. Sounds dull? Not for a minute. Rebecka’s personal life may suffer at the expense of her work – and a poorly-developed sense of humour – but she certainly seems to have a knack for getting involved in crimes that fall outside her financial remit if this first mystery is anything to go by.

When Rebecka hears that a friend from the past has been horrifically murdered in the church of the cult he helped to create, she reluctantly heads north to Kiruna, the small town she left in disgrace years before. Rebecka is nervous about being drawn back into the orbit of Sanna, the victim’s needy sister, who has asked for Rebecka’s help and support.

Sanna needs someone like Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor and to confront the rumours circulating in a closed and frightened community.

The residents of Kiruna are not happy to see Rebecka; they remember the ‘sin’ she committed and are not willing to forgive her, nor help her find Viktor’s killer. Only her pig-headed determination – and the work of a couple of detectives – help her to solve the mystery. Against all expectations, being a tax lawyer comes in handy as well.

Rebecka is a scratchy but engaging heroine. Unwilling to play at office politics she earns the animosity of her boss. Loyal to her friend Sanna, she nevertheless despises her weakness. Motivated by anger and a desire to see justice done and the wrongs of the past righted, Rebecka stops at nothing to uncover the hypocrisy of the religious cabal in Kiruna.

Larsson, a former tax lawyer herself, builds a good and believable cast of characters around Rebecka. Her colleagues in Stockholm are alternately exasperated and impressed by her. In Kiruna, an ambitious assistant chief prosecutor clashes with the detectives, one of whom is heavily pregnant; the church members are at once pompous and threatening; and an old family friend comes to Rebecka’s aid.

If Larsson keeps up the narrative pace of The Savage Altar in the other five Rebecka Martinsson mysteries still to be published in the UK, you – and Rebecka – will be shattered by the end of the final volume.