Paperback, 336 pages
English language
Published April 12, 2004 by Vintage.
Una fría mañana de febrero llega un bote salvavidas a la costa sueca arrastrado por la corriente. Dentro encuentran los cadáveres de dos hombres que, como confirma el inspector Wallander, han sido asesinados hace días. Aquejado de estrés y de intensos dolores de pecho, con remordimientos por su anciano padre y sin haber encajado bien la separación de su mujer, Kurt Wallander, una vez abierta la investigación, debe hacer de tripas corazón y posponer sus buenos propósitos de cuidarse más. Al averiguarse que los dos hombres asesinados eran letones, Wallander no tiene más remedio que viajar a Riga, donde se introduce en los ambientes más corruptos, gobernados por bandas criminales.
I liked the Latvian, crumbling iron curtain setting. And Kurt is up to his own tireless detective work.
I began this and realised it was a recent episode form the TV series. Was a little unhappy as I expected the story to be the same, turned out not to be and there were significant changes. Interesting to see how TV alters the narrative and time scales.
On balance enjoyable, but it got a little too 'cold war espionage for me.
In this, the second book of the Kurt Wallander series, the detective in the small Swedish town of Ystad, gets called in when an inflatable life raft with 2 dead bodies is discovered on an empty winter beach. The deaths are connected with the social and political upheaval in Latvia during the early 1990s. When a Lat avian police detective, who came over to Sweden to help out, is murdered upon his return to Latvia, Wallander is called to Latvia to help out. There, he becomes embroiled in the tense times, as well as gets involved with the detective's widow. A rooftop shootout neatly wraps everything up.
I have to say this series in general, and this book in particular, have been disappointments. I've found Wallander to be annoying. I know our mystery "heroes" are supposed to have faults, probably plenty of them. But Wallander crosses the line to whiny. …
In this, the second book of the Kurt Wallander series, the detective in the small Swedish town of Ystad, gets called in when an inflatable life raft with 2 dead bodies is discovered on an empty winter beach. The deaths are connected with the social and political upheaval in Latvia during the early 1990s. When a Lat avian police detective, who came over to Sweden to help out, is murdered upon his return to Latvia, Wallander is called to Latvia to help out. There, he becomes embroiled in the tense times, as well as gets involved with the detective's widow. A rooftop shootout neatly wraps everything up.
I have to say this series in general, and this book in particular, have been disappointments. I've found Wallander to be annoying. I know our mystery "heroes" are supposed to have faults, probably plenty of them. But Wallander crosses the line to whiny. He reacts in very strange ways to things and in general just isn't that interesting a character.
The books themselves (this is my second) just plod along. They are marred by too much (boring, IMHO) detail. I know writers are supposed to insert little bits of things that happen to add verisimilitude, but Mankell goes way way too far. Like when he drives to Riga, he describes stopping for gas. Okay, but then he has to stretch it out further by saying he didn't have enough cash to pay for it and had to borrow the rest from his passenger. Who cares? There's just tons of this sort of needless detail that go ever further towards bogging down and already pretty slow moving book.
I also didn't like the translation very much. There were jarring bits of idiom that just didn't fit. But the most annoying word was "testimony". The Latvian detective was gathering clues and most of the book was an attempt to figure out where he had stashed them. But the translation called this his "testimony", so Wallander was on a quest for his "testimony". Ugh, what a weird and almost archaic use of the word.
And most of the nearly nonexistent "action" scenes were just plain unbelievable. Shootouts where he is the lone survivor. Last minute rescues. Ugh, it just was too much. And then, after all that, the very first mystery of the book - "why were the men assassinated, had their jackets put on, put in a life raft and sent to sea?" - is never answered sufficiently! And what little explanation that happened was merely one character telling Wallander what happened, without any supporting evidence!
So I think I'll just stop right here. Despite Branagh's excellent portrayal, I think this is another Swedish mystery series that leaves me cold.
