This book is an excellent crime novel set in Sweden. I have read a number of Henning Mankell's novels but this is very different. It's a gripping and fast read, a little graphically brutal here and there, though not excessively. By that I mean I was able to skim over those parts, enough to realise what was happening but not enough to give me nightmares! The translation is excellent in that you truly aren't aware that that the book wasn't originally written in English. That's not often the case, sadly.
I enjoyed the picture it gave of Swedish life, in particular rural and island life. I have a firm picture of Hedeby, picturesque villages and summer cabins, so unlike the melancholy and brooding of Mankell's Sweden.
