Someone's running around town killing men with two shots each to the head and groin. Sounds a bit personal. Van Veeteren and his team race to find the connections between the men, and who might be next in the group of "as-yet-not-murdered".
Now THIS book I got into. Very enthusiastic thumbs-up, best in the series so far. The main characters still aren't very accessible to me, I'm not sure why, but the writing and plot were very engaging and tantalizing. I found myself fascinated with the question, 'why?!' and 'who?'. I suspected someone in the village but couldn't pinpoint whom, and it was a surprise to me when it was finally revealed. The clues were there, so it wasn't from left field. Several different voices come thru in the flashbacks also, so I had to pay very close attention to who was really talking. Very well done.
An unidentified body is found, dismembered. Van Veeteren's team tracks down the identity to one Leopold Verhaven, a convicted murderer. After having served jail time for brutally killing his first girlfriend, decades later, he's again convicted and serves time for killing another girlfriend. The day he leaves prison for the second time, he's murdered. Something's obviously screwy, and the original crimes are re-examined. Never mind that Van Veeteren's undergoing surgery, he'll still figure it out.
This was so boring!! I had a really hard time finishing it, and almost wanted to give up, which rarely happens to me. I usually like slower-paced, psychological works, and on first impression, this seemed to fit the bill. The author's revealed the killer by the earlier middle of the book, and from then on it's a chess game, with move and counter-move. That's when I got expectant, and got really disappointed. Can't tell if it's the writing, or the translation, but it was so tedious I didn't care anymore. Part of the problem could be that I'm not a chess fan, therefore many of the possibly clever allusions went over my head. Again, I still don't care about VV or any other characters, nor the setting.
I'm pretty tenacious, though, so on to the next installment. Still makes for better reading than so much of the other junk out there.
Someone's brutally, and literally, whacking people in a small town, where, coincidentally, VV's been on vacation. So he's roped into helping with the investigation, since he's already there.
Read this sometime last month, maybe? Just like Mankell's series, the publishers released this first one as the 3rd book, I think. So I started with this. It was just ok. I wasn't thrilled as I was with Wallander, since I couldn't figure this guy out, and didn't really care to try. Who sticks a toothpick in his mouth anymore?! *eye rolling* I don't mind cliches, but this one really bothered me. At least the subtle humor was engaging, and the story ok, even if it was really disappointing to know who the killer pretty much at the start. The location and other characters weren't very engaging to me either. Glad I decided to rent them from the library first, won't be buying them.
Nice teacher gets put away for killing his wife. Had an alcoholic blackout, no defense, gets convicted and killed while in jail. Things look much darker as they start digging below the surface of these seemingly ordinary people.
