Kathleen, Guardian reader
I’m currently reading and really enjoying Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It’s a lovely exploration of the creative process, passion, art and friendship. The story feels very grounded in reality; the main characters Sadie and Sam feel like real people in gaming. And not to judge a book by its cover, but it looks beautiful on my bookshelf!
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PD Smith, author and critic
Recently I’ve been exploring the dark and violent world of Nordic Noir for a book I’m writing on crime and cities. If you loved the TV serials The Killing or The Bridge, then you must read Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s series of 10 novels about the world-weary Stockholm detective Martin Beck, described as “Sweden’s Maigret”. Roseanna was the first novel they wrote together, in 1965, and the final instalment, The Terrorists, was published in 1975.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö were communists and depicted Sweden as a country in terminal decline, one in which the progressive ideal of a welfare state had been allowed to wither and die, creating an unequal and crime-ridden society.
The cases Beck investigates are grim: misogynistic murders, child killings, a man shot dead in a locked room and the assassination of the prime minister – – a plotline seeming to anticipate the shocking murder a decade later of Olof Palme. Like Sisyphus, Beck fights a losing battle against the tide of lawlessness: “Crime always seemed to be one step ahead.”
Beck set the trend for dogged, morose investigators in Scandinavia and beyond. An unlikely hero, unemotional and reserved, he “never sweated except when he had a cold”. He’s not a character you warm to immediately, but Beck is certainly a brilliant detective: like a bloodhound, he sticks tenaciously to the trail of clues until he has tracked down the perpetrator. In the penultimate book Cop Killer (1973), a wonderfully twisty story, Beck investigates the murder of the neighbour of the man convicted of Roseanna’s murder in the first novel. By now Beck is the head of the National Murder Squad, although we learn he previously “detested everything even remotely related to politics”. In the end, the series shows that society’s problems will not be solved by detectives but by political action.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s novels have been hugely influential, selling more than 10m copies and setting a new standard for socially aware crime fiction. The character of Martin Beck – a man with a conscience in a city that no longer cares about its inhabitants – has shaped our idea of the modern police detective.
PD Smith is the author of four nonfiction books, including Doomsday Men and City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age. He is currently writing his fifth, on crime and the city.
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Becky, Guardian reader
Katherine Rundell’s Baillie Gifford-winning Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne is an absolutely joyous read, full of unexpected humour and a lightness of touch, even when dealing with Donne’s complex poetry. Rundell untangles all the messy strands of Donne’s life and the period he lived in and lays them out for the reader to understand and enjoy. Every page had a phrase that made me smile.
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Maisie Chan, children’s author
I have just finished a new verse novel by Scottish-based poet and debut children’s author Nadine Aisha Jassat. The Stories My Grandma Forgot (and How I Found Them) is not like anything I have read for this age group (9-11-year-olds). I thought it would be an emotional book about dementia, but it’s a very pacy book with a mystery – or two! – happening at the same time. Verse novels are great for young readers, there is a lot of white space on the page and the word count is often shorter than prose books. I read this in two days, it was hard to put down. The verse aspects were visually intriguing and playful.
I’m also reading Shanghai Immortal by AY Chao. It’s a little bit like my Tiger Warrior series (but for adults and with more sass) as it features many creatures from Chinese mythology. My favourite part of this debut is the cheekiness of the main character, Lady Jing, who is part vampire and part fox spirit. I don’t often read adult fantasy, but this book is humorous and made me smile. It feels like the author had a great time writing this Chinese jazz age-inspired romp.
Lastly, I’m reading Jeffrey Boakye’s children’s fiction debut Kofi and the Rap Battle Summer. Jeffrey is known for his nonfiction books Musical Truth and Black, Listed: Black British Culture Explored and his move into fiction does not disappoint. For someone like me who grew up listening to rap and hip-hop, a book like this is very welcome. It’s deemed “historical fiction” as it’s set in the 90s (it makes me feel old saying that!), but it felt relevant to today’s young people.
Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths by Maisie Chan won the Jhalak children’s & YA prize in 2022. She was on the judging panel for this year’s prize, won by Danielle Jawando for her novel When Our Worlds Collided.
