The Iron Wagon
This spare, eerie graphic novel is based on a 1908 novel never translated into English that is as seminal to the Scandinavian mystery as Agatha Christie'sMurder of Roger Ackroydis to the English. A young man vacationing in a resort town becomes involved in a homicide when he finds the corpse of another fellow, his rival for a young townswoman's attention. He isn't entirely surprised by the discovery, for beforehand he had heard the creaking wheels of an iron wagon that, he was told, were last heard before a mysterious death. The investigating detective soon seems to spend inordinate time with the protagonist, and the latter, when alone, begins to see the dead man, or his ghost. Norwegian artist Jason's rendering of the characters as elongated, nearly expressionless, animal-headed figures and use of only burnt sienna, black, and white increase the somberness of proceedings that become as psychologically oppressive as a heavy Ingmar Bergman film, such asPersonaorHour of the Wolf.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved