The Golden Calf. Helene Tursten. Laura A. Wideburg (Translation). Soho Crime (2003)

A very enjoyable Swedish police procedural. A man is found murdered in a his very expensive house, his wife was a partner in a very high profile failed dot com enterprise. When two further victims are found the connections to among all of the the victims start to accumulate. Inspector Irene Huss is assigned to the case and the investigation leads directly into the welter of greed and pursuit of massive financial returns that underlay the dot com bubble. The investigation is very well set up, the leads are plausible, the reveals are very well staged and the final unraveling is thoughtful and satisfying.
The plot mechanics are really well set up, the excesses of the dot com which seem so astonishing in retrospect were entirely self perpetuating in the heat of the scramble for the new frontier of commerce and consumers money. Helene Tursten uses this background very convincingly to draw a very tight plot around an group of sufficiently unscrupulous people who rode the wave of investment money for all it was worth. The consequences of the the bursting of the bubble and the way that so much money simply evaporated are neatly followed through.
The cast are a pleasure to spend time with, Irene Huss is competent, confident, successfully married and a working mother. She is making all the aspects of her life work with the support of her family and a willingness to get on with her life as it comes to her. The rest of the cast are given room to breathe and express themselves, their professional and domestic lives are not spectacular, they provide enough detail to lift them up and give them enough depth to engage the reader.
With a central character as calmly competent as Irene Huss the book is rather low key, the internal conflict in an investigation that is a feature of the genre is absent. The reader has to be pulled into the story by the suggestive details of the plot and the cast. Helene Tursten has considerable confidence in her writing that lets the story work for itself and the reader is quietly and very firmly engaged by the writing without ever being battered by it. The story is never slow, it is always in motion either professionally or domestically and the balance between the two is natural and strong. There is room for the reader to slip fully into the story and enjoy the unraveling of the plot as it twists and uncoils in a unexpected and satisfying way.
The translation by Laura A. Wideburg manages the tricky task of appearing to be both the first language of the story and keeping it clearly and naturally a Swedish context. First rate crime fiction.

Night Rounds. Helene Tursten. Laura A. Wideburg (Translation) Soho Press (2012)

A very engaging and enjoyable Swedish police procedural. A nurse is killed in a small, private Swedish hospital and the only witness claims to have seen the hospital ghost doing her rounds at the time of the murder. Inspector Irene Huss is assigned to the case and has to try and establish what actually did happen at the hospital. When it becomes clear that a second nurse is missing the investigation becomes much more complicated. The investigation steadily uncovers a unexpected history that is linked to the hospital and to the ghost, that finally lead to a very well staged confrontation and happily unexpected conclusion.
Detective Irene Huss is a great lead character, thankfully Helene Tursten is willing to allow her to be a competent, capable police professional, surrounded by mostly, equally competent colleagues and with a stable home life. This means that the story can move comfortably between Irene Huss at work and home without any melodrama and with credible tensions in both that drive the story forward and engage the reader.
The supporting cast are equally engaging, they are all given the time and attention needed to get the readers attention and they emerge strongly in thier own right. None of them feel like plot devices, the action of the story involves them and is driven by them rather than the reverse.
Helene Tursten skillfully provides two sub plots , one professional and one personal that run neatly alongside the main story thread. The professional sub plot is concerned with sexual harassment at work and the way it is responded to on an organisational and a personal level. The event itself feels a little to staged, the ripples and consequences are very credibly and sharply described, the personal and professional trade-off that are revealed are relevant and make a forceful point without stepping outside the bounds of the story.The domestic events are handled with equal skill allowing for family dynamics that are complex and durable.
The plot mechanics for the main story thread are excellent, the investigation moves very thoughtfully and the reveals are very well staged. The reader is lead carefully from one possibility to another without being force fed plot points.
Laura A. Wideburg's translation is wholly transparent, the story is entirely Swedish and the language feels natural and direct. A very smart crime story, well worth reading.