Nordic Noir
Description: Nordic Noir (Scandinavian Noir), is a genre of crime fiction usually written from a police point of view and set in Scandinavia or Nordic countries. Plain language avoiding metaphor and set in bleak landscapes results in a dark and morally complex mood, depicting a tension between the apparently still and bland social surface and the murder, misogyny, rape, and racism it depicts as lying underneath. Origins : There are different views on the origins but most commentators agree that the genre had become well established as a literary genre by the 1990s; Swedish writer Henning Mankell, who has sometimes been referred to as "the father of Nordic Noir", notes that the Martin Beck series of novels by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo "broke with the previous trends in crime fiction" and pioneered a new style: "They were influenced and inspired by the American writer Ed McBain. They realised that there was a huge unexplored territory in which crime novels cou