”Denmark’s most talented thriller writer in recent years”, wrote one
enthusiastic critic. Steen Langstrup made his début at 27 in 1995 with the
novel Kat . This was followed later the same year by Blodets nætter
(Nights of Blood), and in 1996, the following year, by Pyromania (Pyromania).
These three novels have established Steen
Langstrup as a new writer of thriller and horror stories, a Danish Stephen King
or Dean Koontz.
Steen Langstrup’s universe is set in the completely ordinary everyday
life of Copenhagen or Northern Zealand. As a reader one is not a single moment in
doubt that it could be reality, but nothing is as it appears… A master of plot,
Steen Langstrup surprises his reader again and again. The endings of his novels
are quite unexpected and never happy. On the contrary, demons still lie in wait
just under the surface, and can strike again at any moment. The leitmotif in
the works is fear and lust as the motivation of all human evil.
The first novel, Cat, is
exactly about the character of evil. The subtitle, Ondskaben lurer i regnen
(Evil lies in wait in the rain),
sounds the general atmosphere in the novel: Copenhagen is ravaged by an
extensive series of bestial murders as the rain pours down incessantly. A
domestic cat keeps turning up, even though it really ought to be dead. Meeting
the cat proves extremely dangerous for Maria, the main character, and Isabella,
her friend. The novel is the first in a trilogy about obsession and evil that
has its independent continuation in Pyromania
from 1996. Here Steen Langstrup moves nearer the psychological thriller.
The novel has two points of view – a traditional narrator, who describes how
seven young people’s friendship is severely put to the test, when they suspect
that one of them is a pyromaniac – and the pyromaniac’s own portrayal of his
own morbid obsession with fire. Fluernes
hvisken (Whisper of Flies),
the final book in the trilogy, is published in 1999. Two members of the police
hunt a serial killer at a time when Copenhagen is extremely ravaged by a heat wave
and a plague of flies. A thriller with occult undertones linking it to
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Nostradamus, and Ira Levin’s
Rosemary’s Baby.
Steen Langstrup is inspired by the classics of the vampire genre in his
novel, Nights of Blood. An illustrator has moved into the country in
order to give himself peace to work. He meets green-eyed Cecilie, who has white
teeth and cold hands. The illustrator literally gets Cecilie in the blood, as
she is a true vampire. Steen Langstrup also tries out the werewolf myth, one of
the old horror genre classics, in Forvandling (Transformation) published in 1997.
Kasper and Mia go to Rumania in
order to save their failing relationship. When there Kasper turns into a human
wolf. Back in Copenhagen Kasper meets the white she-wolf and finds peace.
Steen Langstrup leaves the horror genre temporarily in his 1998 novel, Dope
(Dope), turning to the distorted, semi-humorous, semi-realistic
gangster novel. A junkie named Phillip and his energetic girlfriend Laila have
to look after two kilos of heroin for representatives of the Russian mafia in
Copenhagen. Laila gets a good idea – she thinks, but it goes awfully wrong. A
short crimenovel about some of the small fish of the narco-world, who think
they can trick the big fish.
Steen Langstrup’s novels are multi-layered, functioning both as bloody
stories of horror that alter reader preconceptions, as good genuine
entertainment, and as accounts of love and sexuality. The language is direct
and visual; almost film like, with a strong appeal to young adults and grown-ups.
(2001)
