Skip to main content
Crime Fiction: Histories of Babylonian intrigue, village villainy and a savage city
Mat Coward's regular crime fiction round-up

The murder of an archaeology professor and one of her young students, with whom she was having a not very secret affair, leads Inspector Christian Tell and his Gothenburg police colleagues on the trail of ancient treasures looted from Iraqi museums during the US-EU invasion.

But in Babylon (Phoenix, £7.99) by Camilla Ceder, there’s also a more obvious suspect — the dead man’s girlfriend, who is undergoing treatment for impulsive behaviour arising out of an obsessive fear of infidelity.

Readers of Swedish crime fiction will be used to the strong focus on the tortured emotional lives of police, victims and suspects alike. But this book, perhaps best described as a psychological police procedural, breaks with the “Scandi-crime” stereotype in one way — although troubled, the characters are not all pathologically miserable.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
sell genocide
Books / 22 May 2026
22 May 2026

GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends a methodical unmasking of the US media’s complicity in the Israeli genocide, that should be a template for what’s needed to bring Britain’s corporate media to book

DB
TV Network Monitor / 25 February 2026
25 February 2026

DENNIS BROE points out that two popular TV series promote police violence and disguise it as ‘fun’

crime
Crime Fiction / 12 August 2025
12 August 2025

Timeloop murder, trad family MomBomb, Sicilian crime pages and Craven praise

CRIME
Crime fiction / 8 July 2025
8 July 2025

A heatwave, a crimewave, and weird bollocks in Aberdeen, Indiana horror, and the end of the American Dream