This vivid and engaging historical mystery, set in 19th-century northern Sweden, pits a Sami runaway and a Lutheran pastor against a killer of women--and an indifferent local sheriff who insists the attacks must be the work of bears. Mikael Niemi aces scenes of primitive forensic science, as the pastor-turned-detective inspects hairs, boot polish, pencil shavings and more to make his case.
More arresting still is the patient, loving relationship between the pastor, based on the real-life revivalist Lars Levi Laestadius, and Jussi, the runaway boy the pastor has welcomed into his family. Niemi reveals their investigation through the slow, steady questions he poses to the boy--"Look at the legs. What can we say about them?"--and inviting readers to deduce the evidence along with him. This appealing mentor relationship, focused on a murder in a village, suggests in its moving intimacy the one central to Robert McCammon's Speaks the Nightbird, a momentous historical crime novel to which To Cook a Bear measures up.
To Cook a Bear steeps readers in its milieu, offering visions of peasant dances, secret-holding bogs and summer days when the sun never sets. Most intriguing of all is the politics of Laestadius's teetotaling revival movement, especially his efforts to bring literacy and learning to the poor, and the resistance he faces from local innkeepers engaged in the secret sale of alcohol. The title refers to a bracing chapter that offers a step-by-step guide to boiling the skull of a freshly killed bear, but Niemi, author of the international bestseller Popular Music from Vittula, proves ultimately more interested in soul and the heart. --Alan Scherstuhl, freelance writer and editor