English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers discussion

This month we will have, so far, The Girl and the Rat by Jari Järvelä who is a Finnish author, published May 17, 2016. It's a different kind of crime book but it's suspenseful and The Devil's Cubs by Leena Lehtolainen who is also Finnish, published on May 17, 2016 and had me on my seat until I finished reading her book. So far the books are good. Seems to be a Finnish month. As usual I will put books up when they have been published. Good reading.

Thanks for the heads up.

For The Girl and the Rat by Jari Järvelä the book before it is The Girl and the Bomb you won't follow some of the facts otherwise.

For The Devil's Cubs by Leena Lehtolainen you should read The Bodyguard and The Lion of Justice in that order.

Just a suggestion. The books won't be out until the 17th and if you need something to read. Your library should have them.

Thanks Kenneth, i will seek out & read their prior books first :-)

Rats. My local library only has a copy of The Bodyguard written in the original Finnish language. I speak Finnish fluently but reading it is more difficult. I can do it, but it's slow going.
My local store has a pricey copy of it, unfortunately most reviews on GR are not positive, so i don't want to shell out big bucks for a book that may end up thrown against the wall.......sigh........

I'm impressed you speak Finnish fluently, and can read it too. Did you learn as a child from parents, or live in Finland awhile. I've been watching MHZ International Mystery for years now. You'd think I would have picked up Swedish or some Norwegian by now!

Barbara wrote: "I'm impressed you speak Finnish fluently, and can read it too. Did you learn as a child from parents, or live in Finland awhile. I've been watching MHZ International Mystery for years now. You'd th..."

I was born in Canada but my parents only spoke Finnish to me. I finally learned to speak english when i went to kindergarten LOL.
When i was 10, my parents sent me to a local night school for kids of Finnish heritage, to learn to read & write - i hated it - while other kids were playing hide & go seek, i had to be in "uncool school".
Really enjoy the MHZ mysteries as well. I've seen numerous series on dvd. And i've only learned a few words of each language - usually the words that are similar to the finnish ones :-)

How fortunate to be bi lingual! There are students at my son's school who are sent to Bulagarian school, Hungarian school, Russian or Greek school et al on Saturdays by parents who have spoken to them in parents' native language since birth. Some of the children are not "thrilled" to have to attend school on Sat. But the gift of a second or third language is priceless IMOHO. My mother spoke Polish as a first language, but did not speak it to her children.

I'm wondering if I could learn Icelandic, which I hear is difficult?

My grandchildren speak three languages Bulgarian from their father, English from their mother, and German in school. They live in Austria so German is spoken. When they were in the US along time ago we were getting cable and the cable guy only spoke Czech. My son-in-law finally communicated with him in Russian because they were in the Russian army (East Europeans). He's an amazing guy and picks up languages without any detection of a of an accent.

Me, I can only speak English which is pitiful excuse but I only took Latin and my teacher also taught math which I excelled in, and gave me a "B" on the final that I know I failed. What a sweetheart.

My Lithuanian grandma spoke Lithuanian, German, Polish. Her husband spoke Russian and Polish, so they compromised, spoke Polish. I was a Latin scholar aka nerd, took 2 yrs. of Spanish, easy peasy, and picked up some Italian as a summer exchange student. I get to use my Spanish at times, which is fun. I'm not optimistic about Icelandic from what I'm reading. Danish is impossible. Ciao!

Barbara wrote: "My Lithuanian grandma spoke Lithuanian, German, Polish. Her husband spoke Russian and Polish, so they compromised, spoke Polish. I was a Latin scholar aka nerd, took 2 yrs. of Spanish, easy peasy, ..."

Barbara -- can't believe it. My grandparents on mom's side were from Lithuania. Father's side from USSR and spoke Yiddish and Russian. NONE of the grandparents would speak their native tongue. They felt by moving to the U.S. meant they all needed to speak English. And so they did. The only phrase I leaned in Lithuanian is "I love you." It's a shame the U.S. public schools didn't realize it would have been best to teach children another language in kindergarten, not wait until junior or senior high. In some ways it was snobbish. In another, think of how much better relations might have been if our grandparents had passed down those languages.

Well we have a book that is out only in the UK called The Wednesday Club by Kjell Westö. Another Finnish author of a WWII type story.

Kenneth wrote: "Well we have a book that is out only in the UK called The Wednesday Club by Kjell Westö. Another Finnish author of a WWII type story."

This sounds like a good one Kenneth. It appears that it's taken sometime to be translated into english. If i can't find a copy here, i may order a copy through amazon. They ship to North America directly from the UK at reasonable prices. Thanks for the info.

We have a new author from Sweden in Sofie Sarenbrant (new in English) and she has a book called Killer Deal published May 2, 2016.

We have Stalker by Lars Kepler published 5 May 2016. It's a pretty gritty story.

We have an American that took all the diaries of the Norwegians that Destroyed Hitler's Fortress to make Heavy Water and wrote a book about it. His name is Neal Bascomb and the book was published 3 May 2016 called The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb.

Yay! Stalker is on the way!

Finished Stalker it was pretty gruesome but all the right people came out in the end.