Earlier this year, Kate
and Laurie
reviewed two of the three available translated detective novels by
one "Maria Lang," a nom du plume of Dagmar Lange, who's
considered "to be Sweden's answer to Agatha
Christie" and "one
of the big four of Swedish fair play mystery writers" –
together with Stieg Trenter, H.K. Rönblom and Vic Suneson. Swedes
who wrote well-crafted, traditionally-styled detective novels instead
of padded out suicide notes (i.e. Scandinoir)? You sure don't see
that anymore today!
Lang wrote forty-two detective novels
in as many years and was one of the founding members of the Swedish
Crime Writers' Academy, but only three of her novels received an
English translation in the 1960s. All three were reissued, as ebooks,
in 2014. But both times, the English releases largely flew under the
radar of Golden Age mystery readers. An oversight that needed to be
remedied!
So I decided to take a closer look at
what exactly Lang had to offer and discovered that there were not
only three English translations at my disposal, but four of her
novels had been translated
into Dutch with old, secondhand copies still floating about the
web – broadening my scope with three more titles. However, the one
that beckoned my attention happened to be present on both the Dutch
and English list. Easy pickings!
Kung liljekonvalie av dungen
(King Lily-of-the-Valley, 1957) was translated in Dutch as De
verdwenen bruid (The Vanished Bride) and the English
translation gave it the most fitting book-title, A Wreath for the
Bride. What attracted my attention is that the synopsis promised
an impossible disappearance of the titular bride. Well, you know me!
A Wreath for the Bride takes
one of her leading detective characters, Chief Inspector Christer
Wick, to the fictitious village of Skoga, which is apparently Lang's
St. Mary Mead. Wick is traveling to Skoga to attend the wedding of
his mother's goddaughter, Anneli Hammar. A slim, quiet and
self-absorbed girl who "nabbed the richest bachelor in the whole
district," Joakim Cruse, an eccentric, monocle-wearing
multi-millionaire who settled down in the district. Cruse is the
dictionary definition of an outsider. Someone who's seen by the
villagers as incomprehensible and suspicious, but his wealth and
standing made his wedding the event of the year.
So when the story opens, the
preparations for the wedding are in full swing when a nervous Anneli
bumps into her life-long friend, Dina Richardson, at a street corner
where she tells Dina she's on her way to the florist, Fanny Falkman,
to inspect her bridal bouquet – a giant spray of
lilies-in-the-valley. Dina watched Anneli disappear into the floral
shop and talked with two elderly ladies on the doorstep during a
brief, but important, shower of rain. Nobody could have entered, or
exited, the floral shop unobserved, but Anneli never came back out
again. Astonishingly, Fanny swears Anneli didn't set a foot inside
her shop or that she heard the doorbell tinkle when she was seen
shutting the door behind her. Even if she managed to sneak in without
being seen, or heard, she could not have escaped through the backdoor
without definitely being noticed by Fanny!
Yeah, it's a classic and promising
setup of a person impossibly vanishing "as if swallowed up by
the earth" and Wick notes that "one is almost tempted to
turn to the occult for an explanation," but the explanation to
this piece of the puzzle thoroughly demolishes it as a proper locked
room mystery (Goddamn Swedes!) – an explanation used to shine a
light on two of suspects. So that was a little disappointing.
 |
| Dutch edition |
Nevertheless, the strange
disappearance of the bride on the eve of her wedding proves the
beginning of a murky mystery, "which was to perplex and agitate
Skoga more than anything else in its hundreds of years of history"
and telephone lines reverberated with gossip. The fourth chapter
opens with a brief and humorous scene with everyone in Skoga calling
each other until the youngest, overworked and stressed out
telephonist "finally collapsed and began to weep over the
switchboard." But the chatter went on. Anyway...
Chief Inspector Christer Wick, of the
Stockholm Crime Squad, is there as a visitor and therefore acts as a
quasi-official assistant to the local policeman in charge,
Superintendent Leo Berggren. This makes it difficult not to see him
as an amateur sleuth rather than as a police detective. Wick even
finds Anneli's body at the edge of a lake with her hands "peacefully
clasped round a bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley" and a terrible
stab wound to the chest. Another thing placing the book squarely in
the Intuitionist
School of the amateur detective is the lack of physical clues.
Lang hides her clue in the things her
characters say, or do, which usually turn out to have an alternative
explanation. Such as why Anneli was coming out of the office of her
ex-employer, Sebastian Petren, with tears in her eyes or why Petren
had to sneak out of the floral shop on the day Anneli vanished.
Nothing is really what it seems and this subtle ambiguity opens the
door to multi interpretations. This makes the movement of everyone
involved as important to the plot as the verbal clues, which Lang
cleverly used to camouflage the murderer and misdirect the reader.
So I can see the comparison with
Christie and not one that's entirely undeserved, which is usually the
case, but the comparison is not particular fair and places the bar,
as well as expectations, way too high – which can ruin the fun for
some. A Wreath for the Bride is a finely crafted,
old-fashioned village mystery, but compared to Christie's body of
work, it would only rank with her lesser-known, mid-tier novels. Such
as The
Sittaford Mystery (1931), Peril
at End House (1932) and The
Moving Finger (1943).
My recommendation is not to approach
Lang as the Swedish incarnation of the Queen of Crime, but as a
Swedish mystery writer a fan of Christie can warm to and enjoy.
That's why you can expect more reviews of Maria Lang's other
detective novels sometime in the future. So stay tuned!
