This one, I think, will amuse a few of my Finnish friends. Via Mike Glyer I discover an article in the LA Times all about Nordic mystery writers.

Part of their appeal is their reverse exoticism: The unrelenting bleakness, the zero tolerance for chuckles and the ferocity of the crimes — the Swedes really go in big for decapitations, scalpings, tattooed torsos floating to the surface, disembowelments — make the books much darker and spookier than glib mafiosi capers from Bologna and Bensonhurst. And the Swedes do not write conventional whodunits; they are obsessed with understanding why people become ax murderers in the first place. Mostly, it’s because something happened to them as children, often involving axes.

Oh dear. That’s going to get me into trouble in Tampere in July.