I was lucky enough to receive this as a gift from the SO recently and after the heavyweight that A Suitable Boy is, it came as a bit of ‘light relief’.
Having said that this was, of course, a crime novel from a newly translated Swedish writer, so it wasn’t going to be happiness and light!
The edition I received was an American one, so the spelling and language are aimed at an American market. This doesn’t really spoil the story unless you’re a pedant like me about language.
The story is part of a sequence set in the city of Upsalla, which is located just north of Stockholm. Hopefully, the books will be translated in sequence not like a more famous Swedish crime fighter located in Ystad!
The story’s opening is a bit disjointed but it basically focuses on the murder of John Jonson, an unemployed welder who is knifed to death and dumped in a waste snow facility on his way home after shopping in the week before Christmas.
It turns out that Jonson is a quiet, introspective kind of person who loves tropical fish and has been a bit of a bad boy in his youth and although his brother, Lennart, is still a bit of a wastrel, he is basically a decent person. His death widows his wife, Berit and he also has a sun, Justus.
In parallel case, there is a bit of a nutter, Vincent Hahn, who happened to be at school with John, who has gone off the rails and is attacking people and ends up killing a couple before he is picked up by the police.
The police investigation is led by Otto who is having trouble at home with his wife, Rebekah. This isn’t helped by his attraction to Ann Lundell, a colleague, who is currently on maternity leave.
The story moves quickly on and while the character who carried out John Johson’s murder and his motives take some time to come out, it is well thought out and plotted.
The only thing that doesn’t stand out in this books are the investigators. They come across as an efficient, well-oiled unit with several sketched in characters. However, no one person stands out as a lead investigator. Possibly, this is the intention with Ann Lindell, though in this story she is on the fringes until half way through. This may be because, we have arrived fully formed in the middle of a sequence of books as so often happens with translations.
Given these quibbles, the book is on the whole very good and well recommended to fans of Scandinavian crime.
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