One of the hallmarks of Scandinavian crime fiction is that it takes death seriously. You don’t see a lot of special-effects thrillers with a huge, casual body count in books written by Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish authors. They tend to domesticate the crimes, to bring death in close, to make it more intimate.

Death is a given, but a death that is caused by violence isn’t really a fit subject for a tea party or a James Bond movie. It’s an horrific and irrational occurrence, and the authors and their detective protagonists treat it as such. Case in point: Jan Costin Wagner’s ICE MOON.

The novel focuses on death because its main character, Detective Kimmo Joentaa, has just lost his young wife to cancer. (To be honest, Wagner is German, and only spends half his time in Finland. But his cold, clipped style is reminiscent of the best in Scandinavian fiction, and it suits this particular story very well.) The pain of having lost the love of your life, at an age when you have every reason to believe there are many years ahead of you, is convincingly portrayed.

Joentaa’s devastation begins to affect his work. A woman is found suffocated in her sleep with an amateur painting stolen. Then, a young man is found, also suffocated in his sleep, while he slept in a communal room at a hostel.

Joentaa is convinced these crimes are related. He seems to have some kind of morbid connection to the killer, a connection that revolves around each individual’s perception of death. Joentaa must conquer his own despair in order to combat the despair he sees in the mysterious killer.

This is really quite an extraordinary work, written on a very thin emotional edge, and constantly pulling the reader in one direction or another, as the investigation goes down a few dead ends. The occasional chapter from the killer’s point of view unsettles the reader to the point where one doesn’t know what is going to happen, but is perfectly willing to let Wagner lead the way.

For a book with death as its overarching theme, this isn’t a depressing title at all. On the contrary, it compares the way one copes with the way one has failed to do so. ICE MOON is a strong, compact read with little or no bloated puffery or ridiculous pretension. Definitely a step or two above the rest. –Mark Rose

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