The Dogs of Riga

Henning Mankell

On chilly late November evenings you feel the need for a police procedural, especially one set in winter in Sweden where two bodies have just washed ashore on a liferaft.

The Dogs of Riga is an Inspector Wallander mystery and my first taste of Henning Mankell. Is the writer people have been raving about in the Barn? Or is it another Swede? Even fictional detectives have their own websites now. Perhaps it's to help us read the series in order. In any case, I haven't managed it, the reading-in-order thing. A pity, because the word on the web is The Dogs of Riga is far from being up there with Mankell's best.

The bodies in the liferaft turn out to be Riga-based gangsters and the trail soon takes Mankell's detective away from his southern Sweden hometown and deposits him in eve-of-independence Latvia. Its Swedish beginning is rather stylish. Wallander's associates and colleagues are characters you can believe in and there are strained relationships with family members, in the best traditions of the genre, to enjoy. Unfortunately, when Wallander goes east the narrative goes distinctly south. The characterisation once we touch down in Riga is as thin as any soviet-era apartment wall and the "will the killer turn out to baddie number two, or is it baddie number one after all?" ending is more Blind Date than fast moving thriller.

Still, I ought to try another Wallander. This one started out so well. And there's plenty of winter reading left in me.