Malice in Malmo: (Inspector Anita Sundstrom) by Torquil MacLeod
| Malice in Malmo: (Inspector Anita Sundstrom) by Torquil MacLeod | |
|
| |
| Category: Crime | |
| |
Reviewer: Sue Magee
 | |
| Summary: The sixth book in the series reads reasonably well as a standalone and it's a good story with a neat twist at the end which I didn't see coming. Recommended. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 380 | Date: November 2018 |
| Publisher: McNidder & Grace | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-0857161871 | |
|
Share on: | |
|
| |
It was embarrassing when a leading Malmo business man was kidnapped, particularly as the police didn't know anything about it until the man was discovered afterwards, tied to a park bench in a cemetery. He was coy about how much ransom was paid, but it was sufficient that he'd felt the pain of the digital transfers. That would have been bad enough, but a second businessman was snatched soon afterwards and the pressure on Inspector Anita Sundström and her colleagues was to find the businessman and to capture the kidnappers before they took anyone else. Worse was to come though, when an investigative journalist was found murdered in his flat. Was one of his victims the murderer, or was it someone he was about to expose?
It's nearly four years since I read the first Anita Sundström novel. The characters are more rounded now and I've grown very fond of our heroine. She's feisty and determined, if perhaps a little hot-headed at times. Her relationship with Kevin the English policeman is under stress because he's on gardening leave from his force and he's chosen to spend it with Anita. It's good to have meals prepared and shopping done, but Anita's grown used to having her own space. She knows too that Kevin loves her more than she loves him - if, indeed, she does love him. There was one character who disappointed: Alice Zetterberg, Anita's nemesis, who is just a little too much the stereotypical baddy, but that's me being very picky.
Whilst I'm being picky I wish that Torquil MacLeod would provide less description of Malmö and other areas of Sweden: sometimes I felt that I was reading a guide book. He's perfectly capable of evoking the location: he has the landscape and the way of life perfectly in remarkably few words. So, you might be thinking, I've been picky about one character and some descriptions: how come it's four stars? Well the answer to that is simple: it's a cracking good story.
I lost count of the number of times that I changed my mind about who the kidnappers or murderers were. There are red herrings in abundance and they're all extremely convincing. I really had no idea who had done what until it was on the page in front of me. I've read books where I knew early on who would be going to prison and it hasn't spoiled my enjoyment of the book, but when I have no idea at all, when I read the book avidly over a couple of days, the enjoyment is lifted to a whole new level.
The book will read perfectly well as a standalone, but there are strong indications about what has happened in earlier mysteries, so you'd be better starting at the beginning and it's hardly going to be a burden!
I 'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
The Anita Sundtröm mysteries are set in the same area asHenning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels.
Torquil MacLeod's Inspector Anita Sundstrom Mysteries in Chronlogical Order
