Reviews

Jan 28, 20231 min read

1045. Harkan Nesser - The Mind's Eye

There are good books to read in the run up to 31 January, fast-paced detective stories. Like no.1044, this is quite Freudian, featuring...

Jan 25, 20231 min read

1044. Hakan Nesser - The Strangler's Honeymoon

This is the first of his books that I ever read and it is very good – prompted me to buy lots more a few years ago. Beautifully written...

Oct 1, 20221 min read

1017. Shelby Van Pelt - Remarkably Bright Creatures

Quite enjoyed this, but insubstantial. Tova, an elderly Swedish widow, works as cleaner in an aquarium and develops a relationship with...

Dec 1, 20211 min read

919. Håkan Nesser - The Lonely Ones

Best novel I have read for a while. Beautifully constructed and written. The plot covers a 35 year period from the mid 1970’s to the...

Sep 19, 20211 min read

896. Johanna Mo - The Night Singer

A Skandi–noir novel, I guess. Well plotted especially toward the end, but I found the central characters totalling un-interesting. Hanna,...

Dec 23, 20171 min read

560. Henning Mankell - After The Fire

Mankell’s last book, completed I think not long before he died. Unsurprisingly, quite a gloomy book, about an elderly retired doctor...

Oct 7, 20161 min read

436. Katarina Bivald - The Readers Of Broken Wheel Recommend

This is a lovely book, totally different and beautifully constructed. A lonely young Swedish woman arrives in the run down Iowa town of...

Feb 4, 20161 min read

375. Fredrik Backman - A Man Called Ove

I didn’t like this much; P read it alternating between tears and hysterical laughter, but it did nothing for me. About a grumpy old and...

Sep 18, 20141 min read

247. Henning Mankell - An Event In Autumn

Another very short book, a Wallander novella, previously unpublished in the UK. Poor old Kurt looks at a house to buy but finds a couple...

Sep 7, 20141 min read

242. Håkan Nesser - Hour Of The Wolf

Needed a proper novel, with a plot, after no.241. This has a great plot with apparently quite unrelated deaths (one not a murder) linked...

Jun 24, 20141 min read

224. Håkan Nesser - Woman With Birthmark

Maybe it is an unfortunate coincidence, but this is just too similar to 'Borkmann’s Point'. Again a killer on an apparently random...

Jun 21, 20141 min read

223. Håkan Nesser - Borkmann's Point

The last of the Nesser’s that I had taken on holiday. This one features Van Veetern pre-retirement, although called from holiday to...

Jun 7, 20141 min read

216. Håkan Nesser - The Weeping Girl

Brilliant. Nesser is really good. This story features Eva Moreno, his only female detective, a sexier version of Siobhan Clarke in Rebus,...

Jun 5, 20141 min read

214. Håkan Nesser - The Unlucky Lottery

Inauspicious start, but then read en route to Spain in overnight hotel, then delayed in Gatwick, half asleep on plane and finished in...

Jun 1, 20141 min read

213. Håkan Nesser - The Strangler's Honeymoon

This is the only thing I lost in the crash – a writer I had never heard of before, but branded in some marketing quarters as ‘the...

Sep 17, 20131 min read

144. Henning Mankell - Italian Shoes

Not a Wallander story. About an old man, living alone on an island/archipelago in the north of Sweden whose past life come back to haunt...

Jul 13, 20131 min read

127. Arnaldur Indridason - Voices

Have read this before but wanted to re-read it. It introduces Erlendur and explicates more of his family history than some of the other...

Jun 17, 20131 min read

119. Henning Mankell - The White Lioness

A strange Wallander book that begins with an apparent Swedish domestic and expands into an attempt by the African white supremacists to...

May 16, 20131 min read

104. Torquil MacLeod - Meet Me In Malmö

The first in a series, written by an English man (I assume) featuring a Swedish female detective. Basically a police procedural, leans...

May 16, 20131 min read

105. Torquil McLeod - Murder In Malmö

You can see where this is going, in several senses. ('Meet me in M...,' 'Mayhem in M..), just need enough crime related nouns beginning...