THE DOGS OF RIGA by Henning Mankell

Finished We 3/20/19

I ordered this trade paperback at Amazon and received it on Sa 1/26/19

This is the second novel in the Kurt Wallander series. When I bought this novel I also got the last of the series, and I want more by Mankell.

Kurt is only in his early forties in this book.

Riga, in the novel's title,  refers to the city of Riga, Latvia, and 'The Dogs' symbolize the forces that are tearing the country apart. The Soviet Union is breaking down, but they still retain a dominant influence in the country via the Russian mafia and state supported corruption.

THE PLOT:

Two dead men are washed ashore near Ystad in a rubber lifeboat. It's later determined that the men were tortured, and dental work shows that they are probably from an eastern European country. They are well dressed and not sailors.

They are traced to Latvia and a Major Liepa of the Latvian police is sent to Sweden to help the local police find the murderers. Kurt and Liepa become somewhat friendly; a kind of mutual respect for each other's worldview. Both men are fairly jaded.

When the case is passed off to Latvian authorities, we learn that Major Liepa is murdered the evening of his return to Riga. Kurt goes to Latvia to try to help solve his murder.

Baiba Liepa is the Major's widow and Kurt is attracted to this woman and she knows much more than what the local authorities are willing to divulge.

The police force a confession from a local anarchist that he killed Liepa. Kurt doesn't believe this and meets with Baiba and her confederates, but he gets as far as he can and goes back to Ystad.

Baiba contacts him and he tells his police superior that he is taking a ski vacation to the Alps, but really he returns to Latvia (illegally) to find Major Liepa's real killer.

Lots of sneaking around and hiding from real and imagined spies and police agents.

Colonel Putnis and Colonel Murniers are the two police officials that are running the case in Riga. One of them is bad, but Kurt cannot decide which one it is. In the end of the novel we learn that Murniers is the 'good' colonel and Putnis was basically a part of the mafia.

At the beginning of the novel two smugglers off the coast of Ystad find the rubber raft that contains the two murdered men. They decide that they will tow the raft to a part of the ocean where it will wash up to shore and the police can take it from there. One of the men calls the police to alert them to the boat and the dead men. He doesn't tell the other sailor, and in the end of the book we learn that they both had placed calls, and then they had killed each other because they were afraid that the other man would go to the authorities.

This was a very good novel and I liked it a lot. However, the final novel was better because Wallander is twenty years older and beginning to show signs of dementia. Mankell died before he could write anymore of the Wallander series and that's a damn shame. What a concept? A police detective is solving a case but also is battling his memory failure.