This was a good book to read on the plane, and somewhat appropriate for a trip to Europe. Mankell is the Swedish mystery writer with his trusted cop character Kurt Wallender. The interesting part of this book is that it happens in Latvia in early 1991, when the fate of Latvia was unclear and when Riga was still a dark and bleak city. Mankell does a great job of describing that. I remember how weird it was for me to pull into Riga on the eve of December 23, 1987 and find just three pathetic blue stars hanging above the main boulevard - the only Christmas decorations or lights of any kind besides wan street lights.
The story? A life raft with two well dressed dead guys comes ashore in Sweden and Wallender is responsible for finding out what happened. Once they make the search world wide, they find these are two Latvian drug smugglers, and a detective from Latvia gets involved. When the case is returned to Latvia, the Latvian detective is killed and Wallender is asked to come over to Latvia. Here he meets the detective's wife Baiba Liepa, who appears in at least one further Wallender novel. The Latvian police seem to work under alternative procedures and supposedly find the guilty party, so Wallender can go home. Something doesn't feel right to him and some Latvians in the Swedish emigre community help Wallendeer out, though those names no longer sounded Latvian. I thought the smugglers were were meant to be ethnic Russians had very Latvian names - but those are just minor details. This story had more chill to it than the others if I recall correctly, but I definitely intend to read more of his work. I guess there was some controversy in Latvia about the way Latvia was portrayed, but the police really were corrupt, the city really was bleak, and the fate of the country was definitely unclear, so I think he got all those points down. And Hotel Latvia was a weird place to stay - I can attest to that.
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