I love a good murder mystery and am always on the lookout for new authors. So when my Norwegian friend, Inger, told me about a series of crime novels based near her Swedish holiday home, I was keen to read on.

For a couple of years, I immersed myself in the Swedish coastal town of Fjällbacka as I read a series of Camilla Läckberg novels. I think I read nine books about the husband-and-wife duo of writer Erica Falck and police detective Patrik Hedström as they solved crimes in their little town. It was fun to conjure up images of life on the Swedish coast. I never really thought I’d actually visit Fjällbacka.

But I did today.

I’m on my way to the Norwegian island Svalbard, which is well inside the Arctic Circle, and figured I’d better take a couple of days to acclimate to the far North after travelling from the far South.

My Norwegian friends, Inger and Vidar, picked me up in Oslo and brought me to their Swedish holiday home in Hamburgsund. Today we took a stroll through Fjällbacka and pretty much had the whole community for ourselves on a gloomy winter day. It’s a different story in summer when the community and the harbour are crawling with tourists and boats. As we strolled through the town I re-created the stories I read of the village. In particular, when I saw all the quarried and polished stone, I recalled one of my favourites, ‘The Stone Cutter’.

I hit a stretch of gloomy weather in Sweden but that created a nice feeling for walking in a village so famous for its (fictious) murders.

Camilla has written two recent books in the Fjällbacka series, which I haven’t read. When I read these I won’t have to imagine what the community looks like … I’ll just draw on my memories of today’s stroll.