SCANDINAVIAN NOIR

In Pursuit of a Mystery. For nearly four decades, Wendy Lessers primary source of information about three Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Norway, and Denmark - was mystery and crime novels, and the murders committed and solved in their pages. Having never visited the region, Lesser constructed a fictional Scandinavia of her own making, something between a map, a portrait, and a cultural history of a place that both exists and does not exist. Lessers Scandinavia is disproportionately populated with police officers, but also with the stuff of everyday life, the likes of which are relayed in great detail in the novels she read a