From the far north

I had three books to write about, and I wrote about one. Now, I still have three books to write about because I've read another. It's time to write.

The other book I bought at West Yellowstone's Bookworm was The Black Path by Åsa Larsson. (She's no relation to Stieg Larsson.)

Three years ago, about the time I was beginning to read Scandinavian mysteries, I read her book Sun Storm. I liked that book enough for the vague memories to encourage me to pick up The Black Path while in Montana.

The book has echoes of the crooked business people that Stieg Larsson's character Mikael Blomkvist was writing about at the beginning and end of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The story here is about a trio of successful Swedish entrepreneurs who reach too far and not too well.

The stars of the story are the same police detective (Anna-Maria Mella) and lawyer (Rebecka Martinsson) who were featured in Sun Storm. The story is convoluted and overly-complex. It's full of flashbacks and asides. I found it quite difficult to follow the story in the first half of the book before I got to know who the characters were.

This is evidently the third book featuring this cop-lawyer pair. (I missed one, I guess.) Maybe that's why I don't have a very good impression of who these women are. Maybe Larsson has never done much revelation about the characters. Too bad, there's potential.

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• Maxine Clarke's review at EuroCrime.co.uk
  
• A review from Complete Review
  
• A review by Uriah Robinson (Uriah Robinson is the blogname of a short, balding, retired health care professional) at Crime Scraps

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