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siiriainen's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
It’s been two years since Inspector Wallander’s last big case and a lot has changed. His girlfriend has rightly dumped him, his dad’s dead, his ex-wife is getting remarried, he’s depressed (well that’s not really a change), and he just found out he’s diabetic. One thing that hasn’t changed is that there’s serial killers on the loose again in Ysted (population 28,000). Seriously, there must be something in the water there which drives people to go on murderous rampages. Anyway, the book picks up on midsummer’s eve when a group of young adults go missing and the detective on the case, Wallander’s colleague, is found brutally murdered in his apartment. Soon after the missing adults show up murdered and decomposing a month after midsummer’s eve in a field. The book is fairly engrossing as Wallander and his team try to figure out what their murdered colleague knew before he was murdered and how he may be linked to the murderer. Loses points towards the end when Wallander transforms into Dirty Harry to find and capture the killer. The novel works best, like basically all of the ones in the series, when the book is a police procedural and less when it tries to become a literary action movie.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder
Minor: Homophobia and Transphobia