Shutter Island

"This is the best non-Swedish crime book I have ever read. It has the same ingredients as his other more serial-like books – the surprising end and the language. He was in Stockholm not long ago and I missed that and I am still angry I wasn’t there. He is someone I really admire because he writes the almost complete crime. It has characters I believe in, there is good writing and it has an ending which I didn’t see coming. So for me that was perfect. He takes me by the hand and he leads me through the story as a storyteller should. I just appreciate him. Whenever you write yourself you have to be yourself and believe that you are good enough as yourself. You can’t try to take on someone else’s style. But of course other good writers can always inspire you to do better and Lehane is one of them. I was picking books which have inspired me, and Stieg was inspired by us! I am not trying to sound difficult. But you have to understand that in Sweden we had such a big audience before he even started to publish. If anyone was inspiring anyone it was Stieg at that stage being inspired by me and Börge because we had already published our books. In the UK and US he was successful before us, so I realise that for people in countries like the UK and the US it seems as if he was the first one. I knew him as a journalist and he helped me when I was investigating a story on a right-wing extreme party. I had to have a bodyguard for my own protection and he helped me to deal with that because he was living under the same circumstances. So I really appreciate him because of that. In my opinion he invented a character in Lisbeth Salander that was the perfect character for his story. The books are somewhat longer in Sweden. I guess we get more of the Swedish politics than when they are published for a wider audience. The English publisher has, of course, changed parts."