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Revision as of 09:16, 11 March 2018
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{{infoboxsortinfobox1
|title=The Savage Altar
|sort=Savage Altar
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=320
|publisher=Viking
|date=April 2007
|isbn=978-0670916146
|amazonukcover=<amazonuk>0670916145</amazonuk>|amazonusaznuk=0670916145|aznus=<amazonus>0670916145</amazonus>
}}
In Kiruna, in the far north of Sweden, it is the coldest winter on record. The Northern Lights are stronger this year than in any other year in living memory. When Viktor Strangard is found ritually murdered inside the town's fundamentalist church, The Strength Of All Our Strength, his hands cut off and his eyes gouged out, the media goes into overdrive. For this is the second time that Viktor has died. The first time, after a car accident, God had brought Viktor back. He had seen heaven. And the book he wrote about it, and the church to which he belonged, had made Kiruna into magnet for pilgrims... and cold, hard cash.
Although there is an amount of police presence and procedure - and I'd have liked to have seen more of the intelligent, subtle Inspector Anna Maria Mella - ''The Savage Altar'' spends more time on the psychology of the backstory and on past events than it does on the sleuthing. Ultimately, it's about how easy it is to repeat one's mistakes over and over, in a damaging and never-ending vicious circle. It's also about parochialism and how insular societies can, in a desperate desire to protect and preserve, warp badly out of shape. Larsson creates this mood well, using the sympathetic background of the Northern Lights and the blizzards to create a brittle, hard iciness in the hearts of her people.
I don't read much crime fiction. One gouged-out eye is much like any other gouged-out eye. I can't usually sustain interest in a gruesome murder for much longer than the hour a TV drama spends on it. But I like Scandinavian writers - their characters go to the toilet credibly and have sex that doesn't make me cringe - no British or American writer ever seems to manage that. Their people are people I recognise, not irritating social sterotypesstereotypes. I recognised all the people in ''The Savage Altar'' and, thanks to some very clever tension building that started slowly and ratcheted up the pace so subtly that I was caught up before I realised, I really wanted to find out what it was that was hiding behind Kiruna's various facades.
Excellent stuff.
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[[Asa Larsson's Rebecka Martinson Investigations in chronological order]]
{{commenthead}}
|name=Magda
|verb=said
|comment= I am persudaded. Though I have a shelfull of Mankell to read, but this sounds better.
}}
[[Category:Thrillers]]
