'Everyone is looking for the next Stieg Larsson'

By Deirdre Donahue, USA TODAY

This spring, American publishers are plucking crime writers out of chilly Scandinavia and dispatching them all over the USA on book tours.

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  1998 AP photo

  He started it: Swedish author Stieg Larsson made Nordic noir popular with his Millennium trilogy.

1998 AP photo

He started it: Swedish author Stieg Larsson made Nordic noir popular with his Millennium trilogy.

Their goal: sating readers' appetite for Nordic noir, the genre the late Stieg Larsson made wildly popular with his Millennium trilogy.

Is there an author who can fill that void?

"Everyone is looking for the next Stieg Larsson," says Paul Bogaards of Knopf, Larsson's U.S. publisher. "Like J.K. Rowling, Larsson was a once-in-a-lifetime publishing event. But for a book to be a success, you don't have to sell 15 million copies."

Free Press publisher Martha Levin agrees.

"The mind-blowing success of Larsson has brought interest up to a new level among publishers," says Levin, who believes the "most interesting way to learn about different cultures is through compelling fiction."

At the moment, no culture seems to fascinate Americans more than modern Scandinavia in all its coffee-saturated, IKEA-furnished moodiness.

Three authors with big international followings are about to try the personal touch with Americans:

? Swedish sensation Camilla L�ckberg is touring the USA now to publicize the paperback release of The Ice Princess(Free Press, $15), out this week.

? Norwegian Jo Nesb? arrives in early May for a two-week, nine-city tour to promote The Snowman (Knopf, $25.95, out May 10).

?Sweden's Henning Mankell will be here promoting The Troubled Man (Knopf, $26.95) Tuesday through April 12. Despite 30 million copies in print worldwide, Mankell has never really conquered the USA. (The Man From Beijing hit No. 65 last year, his highest ranking on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. Neither Nesb? nor L�ckberg have made the list.)

Levin is publishing not one but two Swedish authors named Camilla. L�ckberg's The Ice Princess is the first book in a series set in Fjallbacka, the small coastal town where she grew up. The next book, The Preacher (Pegasus, $25.95), will be released April 27.

Levin's other Camilla is Camilla Grebe. She and psychologist sister �sa Tr�ff write a series starring a female Stockholm psychologist. Their Some Kind of Peace will be published in May 2012.

Bogaards has high hopes for Nesb?, whose series centers on troubled Oslo detective Harry Hole. "Nesb?'s appeal isn't just Harry," Bogaards says. "He has very dynamic criminals ... more like Silence of the Lambs."

Bogaards sees parallels between Larsson's and Nesb?'s trajectories: "Cult status in Scandinavia, major best-sellerdom in Europe, and a long run on the U.K. best-seller lists."

Nordic noir is not a new genre: Names such as Maj Sjowall, Per Wahloo and Hakan Nesser are familiar to American crime buffs. And long before Larsson dreamed up the girl with the dragon tattoo, Mankell in 1991 created tormented Swedish detective Kurt Wallander, the character played by Kenneth Branagh in the BBC adaptation.

Alas, Mankell's just-released Wallander title, The Troubled Man? the 11th book in the series ? is also the final one.

On the last page, Mankell writes, "The story of Kurt Wallander is finished, once and for all."

How can the writer face heartbroken fans this April?

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