Talk about Swedish literature and black gender it is all one. Even more so when an emerging writer, in this narrative of the filth of the criminal in any social sphere, lands with his particular vitola of a persecuted journalist. Who better than Pascal Engmann to start with a novel that denounces journalism and its pressures? Because yes, also in the idyllic Nordic countries they have their spaces of power with spurious interests and little ethics when it comes to defending their businesses...
Waiting for his novel "El Patriota" to arrive one day with that intensity of the plot that rescues certain sordid aspects of reality, nowadays already we can enjoy other stories in which her character Vanessa Frank takes control of an imaginary loaded with plot artillery. A leading lady who seems to import features of the unforgettable Lisbeth Salander at the service of order and law.
The bombardment assaults us chapter after chapter, from scene to scene, with changing settings from one installment to the next, but always maintaining that live nerve of the writer committed to shock and tension. Stockholm as a dark heart from which beats an evil that belongs to all humanity. Because Pascal's magic is to make everything feel close, too close despite us...
Top recommended novels by Pascal Engman
Land of Fire
The current novel (or at least the best-sellers) must be able to mimic disparate scenarios, to propose genre exchanges in generous osmosis. Because the reader wants it all, passions and darkness, vitalism and sinister drives. It makes sense, because in the end the most conflicting and opposite sensations define us in the most complete range of what we can become. This is one of those novels that also fills everything with a first-rate political component.
In Stockholm, millionaire businessmen are being kidnapped and their relatives extorted in order to get them back. In addition to their wealth, the police are unable to find more connections between the victims, and those who have been released do not want to say a single word. Two childhood friends become gangsters hoping to find the life they think they deserve, but soon find themselves caught in a dangerous game beyond their control.
In Chile, a well-organized organ trafficking market struggles to maintain the delicate balance between supply and demand. But, to find new bodies, they will need to look beyond the shadow of the Andes and the former Nazi colonies, where it all began once. Detective Vanessa Frank will be involved again in a case that will end up becoming the most important of her professional career.
Tierra del Fuego is a socio-political thriller with the Chilean dictatorship and Nazism as a backdrop. Signed by one of the most promising new voices in Nordic noir.
Those who hate women
Misogyny takes on extremely sinister overtones in our reality. In that novel with which the Millennium saga which without a doubt evokes this title "Men who did not love women", we found a kind of poetic justice that is addressed again in this second part of the Vanessa Frank series. Only now the issue of animosity towards the feminine takes on a dimension of organized crime.
When 25-year-old Emelie is found murdered in her north Stockholm apartment - the same week that her violent ex-partner and her son's father is released from prison on weekend leave - Detective Vanessa Frank seems to glimpse that the culprit is clear. But there is something about the suspect that gives Frank the impression that something is missing. Who else could attack the young woman so frantically, an attack that left her with more than twenty stabs to the stomach?
Could the attack be related to the growing digital network of men who want to punish women, the so-called "incels"? These unwilling celibates live in the darkest corners of the internet and are united in their violent misogyny. When a survivor of a sexual assault shows up, Vanessa Frank begins to pull the thread and link some violent and shocking attacks, discovering this group in the shadows.
They are self-confessed losers who want women's sexual availability at all costs, yet at the same time express a dislike for promiscuity. They maliciously feel entitled to sex and attention from what they perceive as the weaker sex. Their accumulated aggression has led these lonely and hateful men to extreme violence. In their own words, they have armed the gender war.
Is there a leader or are they simply several chaotic groups unrelated to each other? The question Vanessa Frank must ask herself is, what do you do when hate takes root? If more than one of them is capable of murder, could they be capable of an organized mass shooting? Vanessa believes they could and is led to a music festival, one designed to be a safe space for young women.
