Anno 1790

  

Here’s another example of something I wrote about, two weeks ago.  First, a period mystery, and secondly, a story that breaks off in mid-stride.  This is no reason not to invest your heart, but be warned.  It proves faithless, and you’re abandoned. 

The year, you may guess, is 1790.  Sweden a commercial and military power in the Baltic, an inconclusive war with Russia ended, the Swedish parliament brought to heel by the king, Gustav III.  He himself will be assassinated, two years later, and this political ferment, between monarchy and parliament, the old aristocracy, the rising merchant estates, and a resentful peasantry and urban underclass, is the engine of discontent: the French Revolution is both an inspiration and cautionary tale.  The storyline, though, is a police procedural, set in a time of unease.

A military surgeon, Johan Daadh, a veteran of the Russian war, is enlisted as a police commissioner by Stockholm’s chief constable.  The tension is political, for one, Daadh being a progressive and a rebel sympathizer (I use rebel advisedly), and his boss a royalist, and then he falls for the guy’s wife.  She, too, has a mind of her own – a midwife, she performs an abortion on her niece – but has to operate under social constraints.  The chief constable isn’t by any means unsympathetic, either.  He’s hemmed in by convention, and the law, and a patronage system that saddles him with malicious opportunists.  This is one of the reasons he recruits Daadh.  Neither the doc nor the chief’s wife, however, are anachronistic characters.  Daadh is a rationalist, but he’s still a product of the late 18^th century, and he doesn’t harbor impossibly modern ideas about disease vectors, say.  That would make the whole show impossibly dumb.

(You might not agree with me, but that’s exactly why The Name of the Rose is so insufferable, both the novel and the movie.  Nobody thought that way, in the 14^th century.)

Anno 1790 is a Swedish production, and beautifully produced it is.  The cinematography alone, shot in digital, is breathtaking; the art direction and locations are terrific; even the hair, the wigs, the rouge, appear candlelit.  We suspect these people probably smell a little ripe, and they slather on the powder and scent.  It’s all very wintry and halfway medieval, much of which is probably CGI, but that didn’t bother me.  The mysteries themselves could be sharper, and the longeurs are a little frustrating.  There could be more politics - some sedition, some conspiracy – and there should definitely be more bodice-ripping, but for the most part, it remains amiable and decorous.  The leads are charming and convincing.  I’m especially taken with Linda Zilliacus, a Finnish actress who plays the troubled wife.  Each episode is self-contained, backgrounded by the longer story arc.  My only complaint is that there isn’t more of it.  Why, with the production values and historical appeal, it didn’t get a second season, is beyond me. 

This is just one of those abiding curiosities.  How come Duster only got eight episodes?  Who pulled the plug on Island at War, or Three Pines?  We’re never going to learn if Life on Mars or Ashes to Ashes is comatose moonshine, or a boat ride on the Styx.  Perhaps it’s better we don’t.

Slackers, Lost Souls and a Serial Killer

In mysteries, as in every other category, fashion decrees novelty, and it is always pleasing to come across something new – or new again. Perhaps in response to the super heroes of the last few years, the Jack Reachers and Lisbeth Salanders of the thriller world, not to mention the high tech apparatus of procedurals, there have been some novels featuring not so polished heroes and not so much efficiency.

Mick Herron's Slough House series kicked off in 2010 with Slow Horses, named for the washed up and seemingly incompetent spies inhabiting Slough House. In 2019 Alexander McCall Smith debuted what his publisher calls Scandi Blanc, featuring a competent Inspector Ulf Varg investigating frankly whimsical crimes.

Now we have Anders de la Motte's, The Mountain King, the first in a promised trilogy, which combines super competent and alert investigator Leo Auster (reminiscent in more than one way of Lisbeth Salander) with The Resources Unit, AKA The Department of Lost Souls (a Slough House if there ever was one). Their truly trivial crime of the moment is a complaint about rogue figures appearing in a super-sized model train layout.

Can this work? Well, yes it does. De La Motte manages the tricky combination of super cop, a young woman prepared, literally, for every conceivable danger by Prepper Per, her intelligent but seriously paranoid and sadistic father. Given dear old dad and her high powered lawyer mom, Leo has her problems and a decidedly difficult style of personal relations.

Unsurprisingly, she is not a great team player. Faced with a high profile kidnapping, she soon runs afoul of the powers that be and of her sworn enemy Jonas Hellman, a honcho in the National Police. Removed from the investigation partly because her mother is one of the victim's family lawyers, Leo is literally send downstairs to the Department of Lost Souls.

The department's prior head, the alcoholic and seemingly disorganized Bendt Sandgren, is seriously ill in hospital after a heart attack and a fall. He's left her with the case of the disturbed model railway setup, and Leo is not best pleased with either that or with the slackers who inhabit the department.

When she pushes ahead with her own line of investigation into the kidnapping, danger and mayhem ensue. This is all very satisfactory because, besides what looks like whimsical eccentricity, De La Motte has included a really chilling serial killer and one of the scarier hideouts in recent literature. If you are claustrophobic, read this one with a door or window open.

De La Motte channels Agatha Christie with a bevy of red herrings and suspects as well as creating very plausible inter-office tensions and rivalries. He himself served in the Swedish police force and clearly knows the territory.

Anders De la Motte

So, this one has helpings of noir and Scandi blanc, too. Do we need a new category for the combo or like all good mysteries does The Mountain King need no label?

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Janice Law's The Falling Men, a novel with strong mystery elements, has been issued as an ebook on Amazon Kindle. Also on kindle: The Complete Madame Selina Stories.

The Man Who Met the Elf Queen, with two other fanciful short stories and 4 illustrations, is available from Apple Books.

The Dictator's Double, 3 short mysteries and 4 illustrations also available at Apple Books.