The Dogs of Riga (Kurt Wallander Series #2) » (Reprint)

Best known for his series of police procedurals featuring the adventures of Swedish detective Kurt Wallander -- selling over 10 million copies worldwide -- Henning Mankell has become a mystery master garnering critical acclaim in both the U.K. and U.S.

Second in the Kurt Wallander series.

On the Swedish coastline, two bodies, victims of grisly torture and cold execution, are discovered in a life raft. With no witnesses, no motives, and no crime scene, Detective Kurt Wallander is frustrated and uncertain he has the ability to solve a case as mysterious as it is heinous. But after the victims are traced to the Baltic state of Latvia, a country gripped by the upheaval of Soviet disintegration, Major Liepa of the Riga police takes over the investigation. Thinking his work done, Wallander slips into routine once more, until suddenly, he is called to Riga and plunged into an alien world where shadows are everywhere, everything is watched, and old regimes will do anything to stay alive.

The New York Times

Whether it's a magisterial storm at sea or the ''gray mud, gray trees, gray sky'' of a barren town in the dead of winter, the bleak imagery in these books is both a reflection of Wallander's state of mind and a comment on the greater darkness that he senses creeping over his country and his world. — Marilyn Stasio