The Bat

Harry was lost. In front of him were some steps, behind him was water and more steps.  The level of chaos was rising, the masts in the bay were veering from one side to the other, and he had no idea how he had ended up here.  He decided to climb. "Onward and upward," to quote his father.
Jo Nesbo, The Bat (translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett, Vintage Books, 2012).

Harry Hole, Nesbo's dipsomaniac Norwegian cop, is inebriated again.  The Bat is the first of Nesbo's Harry Hole series, though not the first translated, in which Hole goes to Australia to investigate the murder of a Norwegian there.  Nesbo is one of several Scandinavian crime writers becoming popular in the U.S.  Based on this book it is a little hard to see why.  I do think it is a continuation of the popularity of Ingmar Bergman in this country:  similarly to Bergman's films these books display a dark and bleak modern landscape where we have been abandoned by God.  We know that Sweden and Norway have excellent healthcare, childcare, parental leave, unemployment compensation, etc. and I think that some Americans are Puritan enough to think that there must be a price paid for this.

Nesbo's book, which conveniently takes place completely in Australia, does not deal with Nordic life at all, except in passing.  The Scandinavian crime writers are living in the shadow of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, who wrote the complex series with cop Martin Beck in the 60's and 70's.  These books are full of intelligent insights about Swedish society and refuse to give simple answers to important questions about crime and society.  Wahloo and Sjowall  were followed by the crime novels of Henning Mankell, whose Kurt Wallander character was constantly troubled in his attempts to make order out of chaos.  Henning Mankell is actually married to Ingmar Bergman's daughter and has sought answers to how to deal with the problems in Swedish society, as Wallander looks not only for criminals but for the roots of crime.