Summary: Hudiksvall, January 2006, police find eighteen people massacred in a small village. They think it's the work of a mad man but Birgitta and August believe they were killed by the same person who killed their mother.
Booklist Reviews
Mankell's latest stand-alone thriller lacks the tight focus of his Wallander novels, but it still delivers plenty of suspense and a compelling protagonist. Birgitta Roslin, a district-court judge in the Swedish city of Helsingborg, finds herself involved in the horrific slaughter of 19 people in a small hamlet in rural Sweden. Roslin, who has a family connection to one of the victims, travels to the scene of the crime and makes inquiries with the local police. In two short days, she traces the only clue—a red silk ribbon—to a local Chinese restaurant and to a Chinese man who stayed at a hotel near the restaurant. That small strand of ribbon takes Roslin to Beijing, where she attempts to trace the mystery man, is assaulted, and encounters a government official, Hong Qui, who is conducting her own investigation into corruption at the highest levels of Chinese society. But China is only the beginning of Mankell's narrative globe-trotting. The plot also careens to Mozambique and to London, not to mention lengthy flashbacks to the nineteenth-century U.S., where two Chinese brothers, sold into slavery, are building railroads. The various strains of this massive plot are skillfully interconnected, but there are too many stories—each of which could have been its own novel—and Mankell spends far too much time laying out his position on modern Chinese and African politics. Still, the opening set piece, in which the murders are discovered, is a stunner, and the finale, in a London restaurant, is equally gripping. Yes, Mankell overextends himself here, but he also shows why he remains a must-read for anyone interested in the international crime novel. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.
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