Scandinavian noir

Scandinavian noir or Scandinavian crime fiction, also called Scandi noir and Nordic noir, is a genre comprising crime fiction written in Scandinavia with certain common characteristics, typically in a realistic style with a dark and morally complex mood, contrasting with the older whodunit style such as the English country house murder mystery.

Henning Mankell notes that the Martin Beck series of novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö "broke with the previous trends in crime fiction" and pioneered a new style. "They were influenced and inspired by the American writer Ed McBain. They realized that there was a huge unexplored territory in which crime novels could form the framework for stories containing social criticism." Kerstin Bergman notes that "what made Sjöwall and Wahlöö's novels stand out from previous crime fiction – and what made it so influential in the following decades – was, above all, the conscious inclusion of a critical perspective on Swedish society."

Bergman also claims that "it was not until Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (2005–07) that Swedish crime fiction truly became a worldwide phenomenon. However, British author Barry Forshaw, writing in Nordic Noir, suggests that Peter Høeg’s atmospheric novel Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow as being "massively influential" in being the true progenitor of the "Scandinavian New Wave" and, by setting its counter-intuitive heroine in Copenhagen and Greenland, inaugurates the current Scandinavian crime wave.

According to one critic, "Nordic crime fiction carries a more respectable cachet... than similar genre fiction produced in Britain or the US". Language, heroes and settings are three commonalities in the genre, which features plain, direct writing style without metaphor.

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