I finished the third of Stieg Larsson’s What Katy Did series recently, with a yawn and a furrowed brow at his depiction of himself his protagonist as a crusading sex machine women just can’t help sleeping with. I read a couple of Jon McGregor books for balance, and then absent-mindedly picked up a copy of Henning Mankell’s The Man Who Smiled. It turns out Kurt Wallander likes coffee and sandwiches just as much as Kalle Blomkvist, and all the other characters in Mankell's book have the same bloody names as Larsson’s creations (though, confusingly, some of the baddies are goodies and vice versa). I think my dalliance with Swedish crime fiction may, like so many dalliances of mine, have reached its dull and disappointing conclusion.
