Publishers turn their collective Eye of Sauron to the rolling shires of Scandanavia in hopes of finding another pot of gold buried among the Moomin Trolls and such.

Scandinavian crime fiction has been popular among serious mystery readers for decades, but even best-selling novelists like Henning Mankell are not yet widely known in the United States.

If there is a formula to the genre, it often includes a cold, stark setting and a grizzled detective figure who consumes too much coffee and junk food. The book covers tend to the bleak and icy, with images of frozen lakes, barren forests and perhaps a foreboding bloodstain.

“Their protagonists are aggressive, but more subdued than in American crime fiction,” said Dave Callanan, a senior editor for books at Amazon.com. “They’ve had their jobs tramped all over them. There’s a slight cynicism to them.”

And they solve all their problems with alternative energy sources and Nokia phones. It’s true. Look it up.