Sort sti

Halfway through this book, 3rd in an announced series of six, I felt that this would be the last Asa Larsson for me. The timeline was jumping all over the place, investigators were finding all kinds on information on computers that I doubt even the best hackers in the real world can ever find much

Show More

less synthesize and then solve the big puzzle. And Rebecka was doing her recovery thing again so it was feeling formulaic - and she was pining away for her secret love. And then there was the corruption/violence in Africa scene......

But, the characters, as usual, were very interesting and well developed, and not just the regulars. The opening chapter was exciting and informative and made me look on Flickr for ice ark photos. There were some very interesting mother-daughter themes were the Mums just can't cope, fascinating chapters about a young girl's artistic skills and other abilities. So I got hooked. And wow, does the ending bring it all together for a satisfying conclusion ? YES, YES, YES !

Show Less

Rebecka is recovering from trauma and psychological damage. This book moves into "outside" characters, and puts more emphasis on Anne Marie, who is becoming a main character along with Rebecka

Asa Larsson writes very well. In short, she tells a good story and has expanded well on the character development from the earlier two novels. I find the entire series so much more satisfying than Donna Leon's series. Here, the political and religious comments are much more a part of the people,

Show More

culture and character traits of the Swedes. I would strongly recommend this series, but it might be best to start at the beginning - with Sun Strom and then read The Blood Split. You can better understand what Rebecca is going through. Although in this 3rd novel, the author has expanded the lead characters to make the story much more interesting.

Show Less

I absolutely love Åsa Larsson's writing. The Black Path is a fantastic third novel and explains a lot of the things that happened in her previous two books. One of the things I enjoy about Larsson's writing is the fact that she takes the time to develop her characters, not just in the first book,

Show More

but over all three. The atmosphere she's created really draws you into the story and, in turn, helps you to love the main characters and all their little quirks and problems.

Show Less

This is the third thrilling psychological mystery in the Rebecca Martinsson series and a great read. A young woman is found dead in an ice fishing caravan on a frozen lake. Her body shows signs of torture. Rebecca , still recovering from the horrors of a previous murder (from the previous book) ,

Show More

is drawn into the mystery, assisting the police in investigating the nefarious affairs of the mining company who employed the dead woman.

Show Less

Yet another top-notch Swedish thriller, this one hitting all the top notes of the genre -- a ghastly crime, a frozen setting, and a story that rockets through twists and turns of psychological suspense. The characters are vividly created, though even some of the "good guys" are flawed, and the

Show More

prose is a delight to read. Top notch.

Show Less

I absolutely loved this book!

There were a number of reasons why this book took me longer than usual to read. Apart from the fact that it is quite long, it also has quite a panoply of characters, and a multiplicity of small intermeshing plots. And characters and scenes are richly described, with details that had me re-reading

Show More

paragraphs in the hope that I wouldn't forget too much.

There's a reminder at the beginning of the book about what had happened to Rebekah Martinsson at the end of the previous one in the series (#2), and I needed that, as I hadn't read the book. In fact I've read #3 and #4 out of order, which is not to be recommended. During this book however we also learn quite a bit more about Rebekah's childhood and the demons she is currently facing.

There's a global aspect to THE BLACK PATH as Kallis Mining attempts to manipulate the politics in African countries for their own benefit. I thought the scenarios showed Asa Larsson's understanding of and interest in the political and economic forces behind globalisation.

Show Less

One night the body of a woman is discovered in an ice fishing hut near Kiruna in northern Sweden. Inspector Anna-Maria Mella and her colleague Sven-Erik Stalnacke soon discover the body is that of Inna Wattrang, a senior executive with Kallis Mining company but they can’t so easily learn who

Show More

killed her. Was it her brother Diddi? Her boss Mauri Kallis? One of the many men she was intimate with? Or something to do with the company’s dealings in strife-torn Uganda? The police meet a wall of silence when trying to interview Inna Wattrang’s family and associates so can only piece together the case slowly.

Åsa Larsson creates memorable characters like few other people I’ve read. In this book, the third of what Larsson says is a 6-book series, there are half a dozen people who slowly but intriguingly reveal themselves over the course of the book. There’s Rebecka Martinsson, the main protagonist of the series, who is struggling with depression after the events of the previous two books. At the beginning of the book she is institutionalised and throughout the story she continues to struggle in a very realistic way. Each of the other characters also displays their own psychological problems including Inna’s brother Diddi whose dependence on drugs makes him increasingly erratic. Mauri Kallis and his sister Ester had separate but equally fractured upbringing and this plays out in the disturbed adults both have become. Somehow Larsson made me feel as if I were inside the heads of this disparate and disturbed group of people and their different perspectives on their worlds were utterly fascinating.

For 90% of this book the plot builds at a steady pace with details being teased out gently as each person’s story adds another morsel. Unfortunately the final 10% reads a bit like someone bought Michael Bey in to finish it off and the high-action sequences offer a jarring conclusion to an otherwise excellent story. It’s not that I’m opposed to thriller-style endings but sometimes they are out-of-place.

I certainly don’t subscribe to the view that all Scandinavian crime fiction is bleak but this is one title that does fit that category. Even the usually optimistic and upbeat Anna-Maria Mella has her share of gloomy moments in this book and I have to say it was nice to be able to walk out into the bright Australian summer sunshine after finishing. However, don’t be turned off by the dark nature of this superbly translated tale because it contains some of the finest characters you’ll read: you probably won’t like them all but I doubt you’ll forget any of them in a hurry.

Show Less

More crazy murders, and more of the wonderful regular characters in this series of three (so far). Oddly a bit more about mining in Africa (after le Carre's "Mission Song"). But, anyway. Wacky murderer and wacky story. Nice enough reading.

3rd book in the series. i've really become comfortable with the far north setting and look forward to seeing what's happening now, and these are really engaging continuing characters. for my taste the ending goes a little glossy action movie, where the whole setup is designed to be small and

Show More

claustrophobic, but we'll chalk that up to an experiment that didn't quite suit her style.

Show Less

This was a fascinating mystery set in Sweden, with six primary characters, all of whom were vivid from the author's writing. There was an outlaw big businessman, a very interesting & unusual brother & sister. There were other outlaw, or at least ruthless, businessman involved as well as two female

Show More

police detectives in whose personalities we readers were allowed to delve. An international aspect of the mining interests of the businessmen was centered around gold mining in Uganda.

I enjoyed this book very much; the storylines were well developed, there was mystery not only as to who was doing what ... and why, but there were some background and underlying issues with which some of the characters lived. I will read more of her work.

Show Less