Saturday 19 June 2010

"The dogs of Riga" by Henning Mankell

The second Inspector Wallander mystery.

Two men are discovered drifting in an anonymous life raft. They are embracing. Each is shot through the heart. Their expensive jackets have been added after their death. They have been tortured.

Quickly, Wallander establishes that the corpses come from Riga in Latvia where the Russians are still in control (I think it is 1991). He travels to Riga where he becomes embroiled in political sheenanigans in which one of the two Colonels of Police is involved. Illegal undercover espionage end in a shop top shoot out.

We never get a satisfactory answer to the problem posed in the first pages.

This is much more James Bond than Hercule Poirot. The real mystery is why these books are called mysteries.

June 2010; 340 pages

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