Saturday 3 October 2015

The Invisible Man from Salem

It took me a while to get started on this one. The cover on my copy is the one with the black marker zebra stripes scoring out the author and the title on the out-sized cover. It's not a look that begs to be picked up. Junker turns out to be a bit of a train wreck, suspended from the force for a police op gone wrong and dragging a small mountain of emotional baggage around with him. Nordic noir does throw up some really miserable human beings and Junker seems to be a fine specimen of the type. Wallander is almost cheery by comparison. A murder occurs close to home, which Junker bluffs his way into an early look at. He finds an item on the body that links with a friendship from his youth. While the official investigation treads water Junker relives his past which reads, in length, like a coming of age narrative.
Carlsson writes well and his dialogue seems to survive the translation from the Swedish to English without having that stilted edge that you sometimes get in translated work. Themes touch on deal with dysfunctional families, bullying, responsibility, guilt, spiral violence, friendship, social invisibility and crime. Plenty to be going on with anyway. More Junker novels are on the way.