Meet the new King of Nordic Noir, Stefan Ahnhem

With his foppish curls, cheery smile and snazzy suit, Stefan Ahnhem doesn’t look like the sort of person who’s going to plunge you into a nightmarish Nordic world of murder and mutilation. Having cut his incisors as a Wallander screenwriter, the 50-year-old father of four is now penning slicing ‘n’ dicing crime novels which, never mind chilling the blood, will freeze the marrow in your bones. 
“It’s strange sometimes spending the afternoon writing about someone coming to a horrific end, and then walking into the living-room and saying, ‘Hi kids, how was your day at school?’” Stefan deadpans. “The trick is to keep the two separate...”
I’m glad he said that or otherwise I’d be making a call to the Stockholm Child Protection Service. Before meeting Hot Press, Stefan was out at RTÉ yakking to Ryan Tubridy who we always knew had, ahem, a dark, malevolent side. Later he’s going on a whistle-stop tour of Dublin bookshops to meet the people who scan in his barcodes. Right now, though, he wants to talk about Brian Eno.
“I was really into the ambient thing and had this band with my brother called Spacelab that you can find on Spotify,” he reveals. “We did two albums at the beginning of the ‘90s that were very Eno-esque. Then when rave came along, I had another band that did these mad, improvised performances that went on for hours. It looked like we were totally out of it on drugs, but actually we weren’t. We did a Spotify playlist for my previous book, Victim Without A Face, which includes Kate Bush, Metallica, MC Hammer and Marilyn Manson. The main crime investigator character in it, and The Ninth Grave, Fabian Risk, loves everything from Kraftwerk to Nirvana.
“He can’t remember what wine he drank last night, but he can tell you the names of all the Depeche Mode albums in order of release. Actually, my first ever gig was going to see Depeche Mode in Lund, in southern Sweden. They’d just released their second record, and I helped them carry out their synthesizers afterwards. Then I saw Ultravox in Copenhagen with Midge Ure, which was also really good.”
Ahnhem has been favourably compared to Nordic Noir giants like Jo Nesbo, Stieg Larsson, Hakan Nesser and Henning Mankell, the writer of the nine Kurt Wallander novels, who provided fans with regular updates on his lung and throat cancer before passing away in 2015.
“The way he spoke and wrote about his illness was very brave,” Stefan proffers. “We met three times with the other Wallander series screenwriters. It was quite late in his career, so he was, ‘Henning Mankell, this famous author’ who was quite full of himself. At the same time, he was also nice and funny and told us, ‘You can do anything except kill Kurt Wallander!’ He more or less gave us a free hand and was pleased with the results.
“The funny thing about that series was, the more popular it became, the less money we were given to make it. Kurt had to stay at home in Ystad rather than jetting off to Hawaii on a case!”
When not disemboweling his victims or giving them the kind of face-peels that definitely won’t improve their looks, Stefan treats The Ninth Grave readers to some wry observations about the relationship between Sweden and its next-door neighbour, Denmark, where some of the grizzly action takes place.
“I’ve been here less than a day and already I’ve had five people say to me, ‘Of course, Ireland is completely different to England’,” he smiles. “A lot of Swedes think that you guys also voted for Brexit. That’s what happens when you’re a small country next to a big country; people lump you together when in fact you’re very different.”
Asked to talk us through the various Scandinavian stereotypes, Stefan laughs and says, “Sweden is the big brother that the smaller siblings hate because it’s always right and politically correct, to the point where you don’t dare criticise anyone. The Danes are anything but politically correct, and will tell you to your face what they think of you. They’re also rather fond of a drink. The Norwegians, who used to be a part of Sweden but were given away, are, ‘Yay, fuck you, we’ve got oil!’ Even though they’ve got money now, most of them still live in barns. I don’t think that, but those are the stereotypes!”
You wouldn’t expect a man who writes the following – “Like the whip with razorblades, or the boiling-water shower, every one of his designs shared one very simple goal; to make the victim suffer as much and as long as possible” – to be easily spooked, but Stefan admits to having more than his fair share of phobias.
“I don’t like spiders or small animals scurrying around,” he winces. “My ultimate nightmare is being covered in cockroaches and them creeping into your nose and your mouth.”
In addition to The Ninth Grave promo duties, and researching its follow-up, Stefan is also working on TV adaptations of his books.
“I’ve sold the rights to the first three, so they’re now in development,” he concludes. “The plan is one book per season, but you’re never 100% sure something’s going to be made until the camera’s rolling. I’m hoping the budget will be a little bit bigger than the Wallander one!
“It’s super-interesting because in addition to Nordisk Film, a big company based in Copenhagen, you have Netflix starting to option ideas from Scandinavia and HBO and Amazon Prime moving more and more into Europe. There are so many possibilities.”

The Ninth Grave is published by Head Of Zeus