A good read. Great geographical details about the islands around Stockholm. ( )

Overall, while I found this book readable, I am pretty apathetic about the series and about recommending this book to others. It’s not bad, however, it’s not great either. It’s really pretty mediocre.

Want to know why? My full review is here. ( )

En pleno mes de Julio, un cadáver aparece en la playa de la isla de Sandhamn, el archipiélago que se halla frente a la costa de Estocolmo, un enclave residencial y muy popular para los amantes de la navegación. ¿Un suicida? ¿Un ahogado? El inspector Thomas Andreasson, visitante asiduo de este rincón paradisíaco de Suecia, se hace cargo de la investigación. La abogada Nora Linde, su amiga desde la infancia, una mujer dotada de una gran perspicacia, le ofrece su ayuda. Sin embargo, no logran sacar nada en claro: el fallecido era un hombre solitario sin enemigos conocidos, y la forma cruenta en que lo asesinaron parece desafiar a toda lógica. Poco después, tras un segundo asesinato, el verano se convierte en una pesadilla.

Scandinavian crime fiction gets me drooling, after my experience with Nesbo, Larsson, Kepler and others, and I thought this book would be similar. But, I found it to be surprisingly sunny, both factually and figuratively. It is a murder mystery that takes place in summertime in the islands of the Stockholm Archipelago, and hence the action takes place under a warm sun for the most part. In addition to the mystery, it also deals with the domestic troubles of a career woman with a husband and two kids.
The actual murder mystery is average, but the descriptions of the archipelago in the summer are vivid. The translator has done a fine job, making it easily readable. Since this is the first one in the series, there is scope for development of the characters and improvement in the writing. I will try the next one to see if it is so... ( )

I watched the TV adaptation of this – called Morden i Sandhamn – and bought my mother the book for Christmas, and then spotted the ebook was only 99p so I decided to give it a go myself. I couldn’t actually remember the plot of the TV episode based on this novel, although bits of it seemed familiar. But then about halfway in, I suddenly remembered who the murderer was. Oh well. But I’m fairly sure there’s an entire subplot that never made it into the TV adaptation. Sandhamn is the only village on the island of Sandön, which means “the sand island”, because it’s known for being sandy rather than rocky, as all the other islands in the Stockholm archipelago are. Thomas Andreasson is from Sandhamn, but currently works for the Stockholm police in Nacka. When a body washes ashore at Sandhamn, and the victim has no connection to the village or island, it’s initially thought to be an accident. But then the victim’s only living relative, his cousin, is murdered, and it’s starting to look like something strange is going on… The book pushes one theory of the crimes for much of its length, before more or less stumbling over the real motive, and murderer. The prose is basic at best, and I wonder how much of that is down to the translation. Annoyingly, everything has been translated from metric to Imperial (for the US market, obviously). It made for an entertaining piece of television but felt a bit slow for a novel of 448 pages. There are currently ten books in the series. If the Swedish prose is as simple as the English prose, I’m tempted to try one in its original language… ( )