By Kohinoor Dasgupta
(Originally published in 2011 in my blog Draupadiarjun)
Johan Theorin’s second book, The Darkest Room (2009), was originally published in Swedish as Nattfåk (Night Fog) in 2008. The excellent English translation is by Marlaine Delargy.
Echoes from the Dead, published in 2007, was Theorin’s much-liked first novel. Rumor has it that there are two more books to come that will be set in Öland, a narrow strip of land on the Baltic Sea. Öland is separated from mainland Sweden by the Kalmar Strait. Here it is, we are told in the author bio, specifically in northern Öland, that Mr. Theorin has spent every summer of his life.
Öland’s unique geography plays a big part in both novels – though Eel Point is an imaginary place -- and in The Darkest Room, so does folk lore and ghost stories.
Retired sea captain Gerlof Davidsson of Echoes is back, and this is only one of many ways in which Theorin demonstrates his love of connections. Even isolated Öland, after all, has been connected to the mainland since 1972, when a 6-km bridge was built. On one fateful October day in The Darkest Room Joakim Westin crosses this bridge on his way to Stockholm:
“The road curved to the west, and when the ground disappeared beneath it, he was up on the bridge. He liked driving across it, over the span between island and mainland, high above the water in the sound. This morning it was difficult to see the surface of the water down below; it was still too dark. By the time he came off the bridge and joined the coast road towards Stockholm, the sun was rising higher above the Baltic.”
It is a most unusual crime novel, which my sage librarian has classified as “Fantasy”. This reviewer will give nothing away, so that your experience of reading this absorbing book is as satisfactory as hers. But, be prepared to be patient: Theorin likes you to feel time like his characters do, and sometimes the quiet of the old manor house is creepily cinematic in the best tradition of suspense. There is only Joakim working up on his ladder and the dark room inside his head. Silence, loneliness and grief haunt the empty echoing rooms of the manor house at Eel Point and the answers come slowly.
* Johan Theorin wins the CWA International Dagger 2010
Swedish writer Johan Theorin has won the CWA International Dagger and a prize of £1000 for his novel The Darkest Room. His translator Marlaine Delargy wins £500.
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