Bit of a mixed bag this month – several stand-out thrillers which think wicked and don’t disappoint… and a couple of distinctly duff examples of mainstream mush. A big name on the cover doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to pick up a great book and, just to prove that point, a couple of our faves…
Van Veeteren is among the most famous of Swedish fictional detectives, but this was my first written encounter with the character. This book started off brilliantly with a mystifying mystery of the locked room tradition: a drowned wife in a locked bathroom, the husband so inebriated he could only remember their wild festivity of the…
Comparisons to Jo Nesbo and Steig Larsson are somewhat unhelpful here: this isn’t a speed-reading spoon-fed page-turner to be read in a frenzy of tension. It has more in common with the works of writers like Leif Persson, Karin Fossum, Henning Mankell and Gunnar Staalesen. There is almost as much to be gleaned in the…
This final set of three 90 minutes films are the hardest of the English-language interpretation to appreciate. Kurt Wallander has been brought to the screen by three different actors. If you prefer either of the Scandinavian versions to Kenneth Branagh’s portrayal of the Swedish detective then you definitely won’t enjoy this one. If, however, you’re a fan…
The final episodes of this Swedish interpretation of Wallander more than live up to the high standards of the earlier series. Given the lead character’s situation – his gradual acceptance of intellectual decline and the onset of dementia – they have the potential to be mawkish, morbid or just plain miserable. But instead each 90-minute…
