The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallander Mystery (Kurt Wallander Series)

i see a lot of disappointed reviews here--personally i think this is one of the best in the whole series. it has more unrealisitic spymovie sequences--but they are breathtaking. i honestly had no idea if wallender would survive--and i've read the later books. dont be put off--this book is angry, venomous really, driven and tough. like wallender. i compare it to early LeCarre.

Riga did indeed feel like that at that time. The author skillfully takes you back to that time and place. The mystery part is not the greatest, but the discription of the nature of the struggle between the good guys and the bad guys is very good. For the mystery I award three stars. I like the short and common Latvian names that Mr. Mankell choose, but the two dead Russians that drifted to Sweden should have more properly been given Latvianized russian names and not the very Latvian names Leja (valley) and Kalns (hill). For mood, setting and background I award five stars. The average is four.

This is the second novel (I think) about Swedish police Inspector Kurt Wallender, and the third one I have read, and it's by far the most harrowing. Wallender is going about his business in Ystad, on the far southern coast, when a report comes in about a life raft that was washed ashore nearby with two well-dressed corpses in it. The investigation leads back to Riga, capital of Latvia, on the other side of the Baltic from Scandinavia, and the always overworked Swedish police are relieved when the case and the corpses can be turned over to the Riga police. But a Latvian police major who had come to Ystad to sort things out is killed the same day he returns home, and Wallender's assistance is requested in Riga in order to solve the murder. Of course, 1991 was a time of great turmoil in the Baltic states, as it was everywhere in the collapsing Soviet empire, and Wallender finds himself caught up in the nascent Latvian independence movement -- and also emotionally involved with the late major's widow, Baiba Liepa. Wallender is not, in his own mind, an especially courageous man; he'd rather be investigating bank frauds, he thinks, than mucking about in political killings. But even he makes numerous human errors, he acquits himself very well. He'll never really understand Latvia, though. At one point, he inquires of a high-ranking Latvian cop what the penalty would be for the murderer, if they were able to catch him. "I would expect him to be shot," he's told. "Personally, I think that would be an appropriate punishment." Wallender is speechless. "That he was in a country where they executed criminals was so horrific that he was rendered temporarily speechless." (I wonder what Wallender would think about American judicial customs?) Mankell, who admits he knows probably less about Latvian politics than even Wallender, probably would do better to stick with pure cop/detective plots, rather than edging over into quasi-spy stories. Nevertheless, he paints a vivid portrait of a gray country and society at a turning point in its history.

In THE DOGS OF RIGA-- both four-legged and two-legged--Inspector Kurt Wallander is back with another difficult crime to solve. Two dead men, dressed to the nines, wash ashore in Ystad in a life raft. As usual, initially there are practically no clues. This crime takes Wallander away from Sweden into Latvia, a place he finds colder-- if that's possible-- than his homeland. He warms up, of course, when he falls in love with the widow of another murdered character, Major Liepa of Riga. Inspector Wallander remains the character fans of Mankell have come to love. He doesn't always get along with his father and daughter or his police superiors, he on the best of days bends the rules of conducting an investigation, on other days he breaks them, he doesn't eat well, he has trouble with the opposite sex and he's a tad hypochondriacal but still loves opera. Does he sound like someone you know?

I found myself not liking this novel as much as previous ones I have read by Mr. Mankell. It may have been that he was writing about locales and people very foreign to him. On the other hand, a B novel by this most talented of writers is better than those of dozens of his contemporaries.

As always, Mr. Mankell writes about big issues, in this instance "the revolutionary events that took place in the Baltic countries during the last year" as he says in a rare "Afterword" written in 1992. He remains one of our very best crime writers.

After mostly enjoying the first in the Kurt Wallander series (Faceless Killers), I definitely found this one to be a significant step down in quality. Set in 1991, it starts off promisingly enough with a pair of smugglers discovering two dead men adrift in a life raft. The good samaritan criminals tow the raft closer to the Swedish shore, where it winds up washing up in Inspector Wallander's territory. For a while, the story proceeds as a straight crime procedural, as he attempts to find out who the men are and why they were killed. As usual, in the background is Wallander's shaky personal life and his coping with the death of his closest friend on the police force.

However, once it's determined that the men are from Eastern Europe, the story morphs into an international thriller. First, Major Liepa of the Latvian police arrives to try and assist on the case. Then, Wallander is himself dispatched to Latvia to help with a related murder there. Rather improbably, Wallander simply steps off the plane and is whisked away by his Latvian police liaisons. At the time, one would think the Swedish Embassy would have someone on hand make sure all went smoothly. However, this would make it harder to develop the plot, which revolves around Wallander's confusion over the forces at work and the Latvian police he's working with. Soon, the book is awash with amateur spycraft, as Wallander goes to clandestine meets with mysterious figures. Next thing you know, the dour detective has launched himself headfirst into a ridiculous scheme involving illegal border crossings, false papers, car theft, and wild shootouts. Even worse, these over the top Mission Impossible style theatrics are due to his infatuation with a woman he's only briefly met. If all of this smacks of a bad Hollywood film rather than a solid crime novel, that's unfortunately how it reads as well.

At the time of the book's writing, the Soviet Union was still in the midst of dissolution and reformers and hardliners in the USSR's various satellite republics were struggling to determine the future of their new states. Through Wallander, Mankell attempts to contrast orderly, progressive, first-world Sweden with chaotic, repressive, third-world Latvia. Alas, the city never really comes to life, and the atmosphere feels ersatz. Mankell attempts to make a connection between organized crime and the political power structure of the emerging post-Soviet states, but it kind of falls flat. It doesn't help that the characterization isn't particularly good, even for critical characters such as Wallander's platonic love interest. Like the first book, the writing is fairly straightforward and plain. One rather severe misstep involves the Latvian Major and Wallander, who are both described as having very shaky English, and yet their conversations are rendered in more or less grammatically sound, highly idiomatic English.

Note: The book was made into a film for Swedish television in 1995 which is apparently unavailable in English.