can you make it Swedish?

The October 17 issue of the New Yorker magazine has a cartoon in which an aspiring author has presented his manuscript to a potential publisher. The publisher smiles and says, "It's a gripping detective thriller, but could you make it Swedish??
For any of you who may have been living under a rock, the reference is to the 3 books by the Swedish writer Stieg Larsson -- books that have been topping best seller lists -- in the USA and elsewhere -- for the past year and longer.
The sales of this book may have been compounded by the fact that the author died of a heart attack shortly after he found a publisher.
But the books are fascinating in their own right. The female lead appears in the first book as "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", and continues to play a major role in the second and third volumes of the trilogy. I agree with people who say that that these novels have parts that are both violent and graphic. But in a book, it is easy to skip over those parts.
The male lead is a thinly disguised version of Larsson himself. Larsson is a strong feminist, and he doesn't shy away from the theme of sexual abuse by his own gender.
I read all three of these books; the aformentioned, then "The Girl who Played with Fire," and "The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest". But I didn't read them in close succession. For books as intense as these,one needs a breather in between. SD

A GOOD HARD LOOK

The book is A GOOD HARD LOOK and the author is Ann Napolitano. this is a work of fiction, but one of the main characters is the real life writer Flannery O'connor. I will confess I have never read anything by O'connor, who seemed to specialize in short fiction. I did see the movie "Seabiscuit" a true story about an underdog race horse that came from behind to win. In Napolitano's book, Flannery is the promising writer who went off to New York, and now has been forced by illness to return to her home, a small town in Georgia. She lives with her mother and tries to focus on her writing and ignore the neighbors. Flannery's one indulgence is her birds -- she has acquired a noisy flock of unique fowl, the most notable being a gang of noisy peacocks. The first half of the book moves along like a chronicle of small town life, but then, there is a virtual implosion which leaves two people dead, and nothing can ever be the same again. The book is well written and left me wanting to know more about Flannery O'connor.
NEXT WEEK; Can you make it more Swedish?

welcome

Hi there and welcome to my Michigan Mysteries blog. Like most writers, I am also an avid reader, of both fiction and non fiction. I like histories and mysteries, biographies, a little bit of chick lit and the occasional classic. I plan to post weekly about whatever I may be reading and I always welcome suggestions and comments from my readers. Coming up soon; A GOOD HARD LOOK by Ann Napolitano.