Winner of the Swedish Crime Academy Award for Best Crime Novel Great little police procedural, set in Sweden. A local man is killed, and the police try to solve the crime. This feels like it could be a series, with many police officers with their own personalities and stories. There was a comment on the inside cover, comparing this to Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books (which I loved!!) and then, a character makes reference to Carella, the main cop of the 87th books. That was neat. And the story was good, with enough twists to keep you on your toes, enough characters and other back stories and plenty of suspense. At times I wondered if there had been a book previous to this one, but I couldn't find any information to suggest that. There was a lot of information about the police officers, referring to their last case, so it felt like a sequel. But it wasn't so vague or confusing to make the story hard to follow.
I also picked this book because of the setting, and it didn't disappoint. I got a great sense of everyday life in Sweden, even if the place names and people were not what I was used to. But that is why is is fun to expand horizons this way. The next novel in the series is called The Cruel Stars of the Night, and I may have to request that at the library.
Thanks for this review! I'm looking forward to reading this one...I originally got it because of the setting, but now that I have a challenge it fits, I'm really happy I bought it :)
ReplyDelete