Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Darker Shade of Sweden | 2013 | Tove Alsterdal | Buy |
A Darker Shade of Sweden is a crime anthology that brings together some of the genre’s prominent Scandinavian voices, with Tove Alsterdal among the contributors. Anthologies like this serve a particular purpose in crime fiction: they let readers sample writers they might not have encountered before, and they show how much variation exists within what gets labelled as a single genre.
The collection was published in 2013, when Nordic noir had found a large international audience following the success of Stieg Larsson and the wave of translations that followed. Gathering multiple authors in one place allowed editors to show both the common threads (cold landscapes, social critique, psychological depth) and the differences in how individual writers approached the form.
For Tove Alsterdal readers, the anthology offers a shorter piece in a different context than her novels, which can be an interesting comparison. For readers new to Scandinavian crime generally, it remains a useful sampler of what the genre offers.