Another Time, Another Life

by Leif GW Persson  Pantheon,Tra Edition, March 2012

This is a very good mystery

This is a complex murder mystery set in Sweden over a 25 years period.   In 1975 leftist radicals capture the German embassy in Stockholm and inadvertently blow up the embassy.  Several of the radicals are killed and many are gravely injured.  While the radicals are all German the police suspect that they had help from Swedes.   A decade later a seemly unconnected murder of a civil servant is investigated by police officers Bo Jarnebring and Anna Holt.  The investigation is headed up by an incompetent supervisor, Evert Bäckström and despite the best investigative efforts of the police the murder is unsolved and lumped into a series of homosexual sex crimes.  Ten years later the murder case resurfaces and the investigation leads right into the prime minister’s cabinet.

This is a very good mystery.  It is translated from Swedish and has a clinical documentary style to it.  I’m unsure if the author intended this style or it came from the translation but it works well for this story.  The majority of the story deals with the murder investigation and the techniques used by the Swedish police.  This section is very interesting and as good a police procedural as you’ll read.  The character development of the major characters is well done and the author gives them enough of a back-story to make you care about them.  The section of the book that deals with the investigation of a potential government minister reads like an investigative journalist report.  You can really imagine this stuff happening!

I’d highly recommend this book and look forward to more from this author.

I read a copy of this book borrowed from The Free Library of Philadelphia

The Girl Who...

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The Girl Who Played with Fire

by Steif Larrson, Knopf, 2009, 2010

I realize I may be the last person in the western world to read these mysteries. I read the first novel in the trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) when it was published in English. I enjoyed it but was left wondering what the buzz was about this series. I recently read the last two and I have the same reaction. These are good mysteries no doubt, but in my mind not to the level of best stories from P.D.James, Michael Connolly or even Tana French.

Spoilers ahead. The last two books are in reality one story that deals with Lisbeth Salander’s life. In Dragon Tattoo she is introduced as a fairly quirky character but we don't learn much of her life story. In these stories we are told about her KGB defector father and the cruelty of her early life. The kid couldn’t get a break and things aren’t improving for her here. She is wrongly accused of the murders of an investigative journalist and his partner who were in the process of exposing a sex trafficking ring. While most of Sweden believes her guilty she is assisted only by Blomkvist and a loyal group of supporters. In Fire the action centers on the chase to catch Salander and convict her of the murders, ending the story with her shot in the head after a violent confrontation with her father and a previously unknown half brother. Hornet’s Nest picks right up where Fire stopped. The key story line here is the cover-up within the Swedish Secret Police that allowed Salander’s father to operate with impunity as a criminal in Sweden. This story is the weakest of the three. There are pages upon pages that attempt to explain the Swedish government system of checks and balances or lack thereof. There is no end to administrative steps that go on as Blomkvist et al attempt to roll up the Secret Police cabal who are responsible for Salander’s troubles. Within the Secret Police there isn't a strong villian character to focus on.  Salander is in either the hospital or in jail throughout the entire story so there is way less action in this novel. There are some side stories in this one that help a bit with the lack of action in the main event but not enough in my opinion.

So I’d say if you read mysteries and thrillers you should probably read this trilogy. Tattoo was far and away the best, Fire was decent but Hornet’s Nest was a yawner for me. The English language version of Dragon Tattoo (Michael Craig as Blomkvist, Rooney Mara as Salander) will be released by Sony Pictures in December of this year. I bet that only adds to the hype that these books have received. Can’t figure it out!

I read copies of these novels borrowed from The Free Library of Philadelphia.