A surprisingly high proportion of economists like to relax with either detective fiction or science fiction. I believe it has something to do with the application of strict logic in an ordered world. Below are images of an article I wrote about this in The Independent long ago – apologies for the quality as it's a scan of a yellowed cutting from the pre-Internet dark ages.

Dominating the detective fiction landscape at present is the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, which hardly represents an ordered universe. On the contrary, he portrays modern Sweden as an infernal land of violence, corruption, misogyny. In a dark mood, one could take it as a commentary on the state of capitalism. There's a long review in Vanity Fair by Christopher Hitchens, a writer who can do dark moods very well. He's a bit lukewarm about the books. I thought they were fab.