Book review: Hour Of The Wolf

SWEDISH crime fiction remains favoured reading matter across the globe.

SWEDISH crime fiction remains favoured reading matter across the globe. It is, for the most part, a refreshing approach to telling stories of human transgressions and the subsequent puzzles to track and nab transgressors.

There is more action in thought processes than gun-blazing, doorbusting processes for these detectives. Life and crime are jigsaws to be pieced together with intuition, patience and a scattering of clues.

In this vein of Scandinavian crime writing, Hakan Nesser was apparently a best-selling author long before Stieg Larsson and his tattooed heroine, Lisbeth Salander, arrived.

Nesser's hero has been Inspector Van Veeteren, who is now retired from the Maardam police, but is dragged back into sleuthing when his estranged son is brutally murdered, not far from a hit-and-run accident where a teenage boy was killed. More deaths follow as Van Veeteren's former colleagues slog through detail after detail, searching for clues and links.

The plot rolls along at a reasonable, engaging pace and there are sidelines, but the dialogue tends to make for a dour read.

At issue is the book's first publication in 1999, a fair hike from this 2012 English translation that leaves parts a tad outmoded. Or perhaps the Swedish sense of humour doesn't always translate to English, perhaps translations fade some original colours but the writing isn't always great.

Hour Of The Wolf
Hakan Nesser
Pan Macmillan, $27.99