The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallendar Mystery (Kurt Wallander Mysteries (Hardcover)) - Hardcover

Mankell, Henning

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565847873 ISBN 13: 9781565847873

Publisher: The New Press, 2003

Synopsis

The Dogs of Riga takes Inspector Kurt Wallander to Riga, Latvia, to investigate the murder of two Eastern European criminals.

About this title

About the Author

Internationally acclaimed author Henning Mankell has written nine Kurt Wallander mysteries. The books have been published in thirty-three countries and consistently top the bestseller lists in Europe, receiving major literary prizes (including the UK's Golden Dagger for Sidetracked) and generating numerous international film and television adaptations. Born in 1948, Mankell grew up in the Swedish village of Sveg. He now divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where he works as a director at Teatro Avenida. Translator Laurie Thompson lives in Wales and has edited Swedish Book Review since its launch in 1983. He has translated fifteen books from Swedish, including three Kurt Wallander mysteries.

Reviews

Set against the chaotic backdrop of eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mankell's intense, accomplished mystery, the last in his Kurt Wallander series (Firewall, etc.), explores one man's struggle to find truth and justice in a society increasingly bereft of either. Here the provincial Swedish detective takes on a probably fruitless task: investigating the murders of two unidentified men washed up on the Swedish coast in an inflatable dinghy. The only clues: their dental work suggests they're from an Eastern Bloc country; the raft is Yugoslavian. But their deaths mushroom into an international incident that takes Wallander to Riga, Latvia, and enmeshes him in an incredibly dangerous and emotionally draining situation, battling forces far larger than the "bloodless burglaries and frauds" he typically pursues in Sweden. In Riga, Wallander must deal with widespread governmental corruption, which opens his eyes to the chilling reality of life in the totalitarian Eastern Bloc: grim, harrowing and volatile. Wallander's introspection and self-doubt make him compellingly real, and his efforts to find out what happened to those men on the life raft makes for riveting reading. There's a pervasive sense of Scandinavian gloom, in Wallander and in the novel, that might be difficult for some American readers, but this is a very worthy book-a unique combination of police procedural and spy thriller that also happens to be a devastating critique of Soviet-style Communism.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1565847873
• ISBN 13: 9781565847873
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 334