In peaceful southern Sweden Louise Akerblom, an estate agent, pillar of the Methodist Church, wife and mother, suddenly disappears. There is no explanIn peaceful southern Sweden Louise Akerblom, an estate agent, pillar of the Methodist Church, wife and mother, suddenly disappears. There is no explanation and no motive. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team are called in to investigate.
Wallander has a gut feeling that the victim will never be found alive, but he has no idea how far his search for the killer will touch his own family. Meanwhile in South Africa, Nelson Mandela has made his long walk to freedom, setting in train the country's painful journey towards the end of apartheid. Wallander and his colleagues find themselves caught in a complex web of intrigue originating on another continent.
This is the third book in the series and it felt very different from the ones that had gone before. This book felt more like some spy novel written by someone like Tom Clancy or Frederick Forsyth rather a straight forward crime investigation. That isn't to say that it was bad, it was fast paced and well written but it wasn't what I was expecting either....more
"I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them. Working backwards, seeking only facts."
So b"I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them. Working backwards, seeking only facts."
So begins 'The Black Dahlia' , a novel loosely based upon a real case, the murder of Elizabeth Short that the press nicknamed the Black Dahlia. She was born in Boston in 1924 and was murdered in Los Angeles in 1947. Her case became famous because her body was horribly mutilated and is still unsolved. Ellroy uses the case as a basis to write a complex story of Los Angeles in the 1940s.
Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert, our narrator, is a former boxer and LAPD officer. Bucky is the son of a German immigrant who doesn’t hide his racist tendencies and during WWII agreed to give his Japanese neighbours up to keep his job with the LAPD. Lee Blanchard is another ex-boxer and LAPD officer famous for solving a hold-up case and then shacking up with the criminal’s girlfriend, Kay, after the trial.
As semi-famous former boxers, they are asked by their bosses to fight against each other to promote a bill that will increase the wages of all of LAPD's staff. They agree to it and the fight is highly publicized earning them the nicknamed 'Fire' and 'Ice'. After the bout they become patrol partners and they form a bond based upon mutual respect as well as a shared love of Kay. They find themselves attached to the taskforce dedicated to solving the Betty Short murder.
As Ellroy follows the thread of a murder investigation he also shows corruption and power politics prevalent in the LAPD, he takes pleasure in describing brothels, underground lesbian meeting points and seedy hotels. He describes the almost routine violence against suspects and police procedures, they will do almost anything to get a conviction. He also takes the reader to rich neighbourhoods where cruelty and ugliness is present behind polished manners, greed. sex and betrayal in a burgeoning city where aspiring actresses often live an existence of hopelessness prey for powerful men.
This novel is about friendship and obsession and how they can sometimes blind us to what is right in front of us. In some respects I found it a difficult book to read; the 'good guys' are corrupt, violent, drug-fuelled misogynists whilst the 'bad guys' hide their own vices behind a veneer of respectability. I realised very early on into this book that the real-life crime is still unsolved and was curious to discover if Ellroy would make his characters solve it, and was curious as to know what would happen to Bucky once it came to it's conclusion one way or the other. But whilst this is undoubtedly a powerful piece of writing that started really well I came away from it feeling somewhat short-changed. In the end I simply got fed up with all the gore and sleaze, whilst the final chapters was a rather bizarre kitsch noir. Just what was Bucky on?...more
This is the second in the series and Jim Stringer has moved from London to Halifax to work as a fire man for the 'Yorkshire and Lancashire Steam CompaThis is the second in the series and Jim Stringer has moved from London to Halifax to work as a fire man for the 'Yorkshire and Lancashire Steam Company'. On an excursion to Blackpool the train that Jim is working on is suddenly halted in its tracks by a gritstone placed on the tracks ahead of it and a young woman loses her life. Jim sets out to discover who tried to wreck the train.
Once again I should point out that I live in the North, work on the trains there, often even to Blackpool, have a friend who lives in Sowerby Bridge so know the area quite well and enjoy reading about social history. The author paints a vivid picture of Halifax in 1905, the great weaving mills with their Wakes Weeks holidays to a Blackpool in its heyday, the music halls and pubs of the era and of course, the Edwardian steam railway. I found this all fascinating and compelling. In particular I found the description of the first trip on the steam-engine thrilling: could imagine the landmarks I know flashing by, the heat and sweat of stoking the firebox, the almost dance-like nature of keeping your balance on the footplate whilst the engine was barrelling along at full steam- I almost felt I was there with them.
Unfortunately the whodunit element of this book just didn't work for me. It just wasn't particularly gripping. Jim seems to do little in the way of 'detective work' but rather seems to spend the whole book dreaming up tenuous scenarios in which to to fit in each person. The authorities barely seemed to care who placed the gritstone on the track and I didn’t either.
Jim is a likeable character, an intelligent, working-class railwayman but I saw little in the way of character development from the first in the series. I have several more of these in my possession so I don't intend to give up on them totally but it may be a while before I get to the next in line....more
It is the winter of 1991 and a life raft containing the bodies of two men, dressed in expensive suits, wash up on a beach in Sweden. Kurt Wallander anIt is the winter of 1991 and a life raft containing the bodies of two men, dressed in expensive suits, wash up on a beach in Sweden. Kurt Wallander and his team are tasked with solving the crime. During the investigation it soon becomes clear that the victims are Latvian criminals who have been murdered in a gangland hit. When a Latvian police officer who was assisting on the case is murdered Wallander travels across the Baltic Sea to Riga where he is plunged into a frozen, alien world of police surveillance, corruption, barely veiled threats and lies.
This is the second book in the series and is almost in a different genre from the first. Whereas 'Faceless Killers' saw Wallander trying to solve a crime and revolves around police procedure, 'The Dogs of Riga reads more like an espionage novel in the style of John Le Carrė. Whilst there are still leads to be chased down and things to be discovered, much of this book is about clandestine meetings and giving an insight in to the lives of the people who must live in a police state.
Whilst I didn't find this novel as enjoyable as 'Faceless Killers, Mankell’s gritty, minimalist, noir writing style is still interesting. Mankell also manages to capture and convey varying feelings and sentiments about the fall of communism, the end of the Cold War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union without indulging in long ideological debates.
Overall I found this is a decent read and a solid espionage thriller and makes this a book not to be missed as we see the continued development of Wallander’s character although I don't understand his tendency to fall in love in every book, given his general disillusionment....more
"From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away"
"High Window is th"From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away"
"High Window is the third in the series and sees Philip Marlowe trying to track down a rare gold coin that was part of a collection left to a mean spirited and totally unpleasant "dried up husk of a woman" who treats her highly strung secretary horribly, by her late husband.
A bit more of Marlowe's character is fleshed out in this book. We see that that under his hard shell lurks a big heart as he goes out of his way to help and take care of a seemingly innocent, long-suffering character. There seemed an added confidence in the writing which is as rich as ever, with some terrific descriptions of people and places, but I found it harder to engage with this one as much as I had the others. Marlowe is as hard-boiled, wise-cracking as ever but otherwise there aren't any really likeable characters in it. There is also a pervading cynicism throughout, intended I believe, that began to wear a bit thin towards the end. Despite that this book is worth reading for Chandler's writing style alone....more
"Justice doesn't only mean that people who commit crime are punished. It also means that we can never give up seeking the truth."
'Faceless Killers' is"Justice doesn't only mean that people who commit crime are punished. It also means that we can never give up seeking the truth."
'Faceless Killers' is the first in the Kurt Wallander series of books. Wallander's life is a mess: his wife has left him, his daughter refuses to speak to him and even his own father barely tolerates him. Wallander eats badly, buries himself in work and drinks his nights away in loneliness.
Early one freezing January morning a farmer discovers that his neighbours Johannes and Maria Lövgren have been brutally attacked. Johannes Lövgren is dead, and Maria is barely alive. Ystad Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team are called to investigate.
Initially there seems no reason why the Lövgrens have been so brutally attacked, they didn't appear wealthy and nothing valuable seems to have been taken. When Maria Lövgren dies, uttering the word "foreign" with her dying breath, Wallander and his team are left with an additional problem. There are several migrant camps in the vicinity and anti-immigration sentiment in the local populace is already running high, so when word leaks out that the Lövgrens may have been killed by foreigners, emotions can only escalate. So when a Somali immigrant is shot Wallander find himself with another murder on his hands and a race against time to prevent others.
As the police look more deeply into the Lövgren case they find that there was more to Johannes Lövgren than it appeared and there are facts about him that even his wife didn't know. Whilst the murder of the refugee has political ramifications of its own. Meanwhile Wallander is having problems of his own.
Police procedure, as the members of the team collect evidence, conduct interviews and follow leads, is central to this novel and gets a realistic impression of how very long it can take to solve a case. There are long hours; the public, press and superiors to satisfy, dogged footwork to be done but there is also a real sense of camaraderie. All of the cops work long hours but still take time to look out for each other.
Kurt Wallander himself is an interesting character. He has had some hard blows in his life but is reflective rather than bitter and doesn't waste his time complaining about it. He’s a very human character who makes mistakes during investigation but through sheer tenacity and devotion to duty still manages to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Given that this was first published some thirty years ago it still feels fresh and relevant. Despite the fact that it takes a while to solve the actual crime the action still flows at a reasonable pace and doesn't get too bogged at any point. But that's not to say that I didn't have a few minor gripes. Wallander is too often conveniently in the right spot at the right time and gets too personally involved in chasing up leads than I believe an officer of his rank should be, whilst his relationship with the prosecutor seems a little strange. This isn't a genre that I would normally reach for but overall I found 'Faceless Killers' a realistic crime novel with an interesting protagonist and I will certainly look out for others in the series. ...more
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