A Kurt Wallander Mystery

     Henning Mankell wrote The Dogs of Riga after the Soviet Union was breaking up. It was originally published in Swedish in 1992, then translated by Laurie Thompson in 2001. Like the character Kurt Wallander I know very little about Latvia, but this novel gives a grim picture of its history. In the afterword Henning Mankell writes, "The revolutionary events that took place in the Baltic countries during the last year were the basis for this novel." In the novel Wallander is a police inspector who gets drawn into a strange case when a life-raft drifts ashore on a Swedish beach with two dead men who have been murdered in it. Trying to locate where the raft has come from and what is the identity of the men is completely baffling to Inspector Wallander. Because of the currents and the various countries along the Baltic sea, its any one's guess as to which country these men have drifted from. The raft proves to be made in Yugoslavia and used by the Russians, so Interpol is notified and a police officer from Latvia is arriving to help identify the bodies. The mystery becomes more complicated and the suspense becomes greater and I am reminded of Alan Furst's novels of spy thrillers in early World War II era, only this is 1991 and the reality of the hardships is difficult to read. This is the second in the Kurt Wallander series.