The Falling Detective

Leo Junker is back in the snake pit [aka the homicide unit] – after a murder case where he was the intended victim.

Leo is still addicted to prescription drugs, but is desperately pretending to his colleagues that he’s fit for duty. When a sociologist is found stabbed to death Leo is assigned to the case, but before he can really get started the case is abruptly reassigned to Security Services.Unable to let the case go, Leo continues investigating covertly, and finds himself mired in a violent turf war between two extreme right-wing nationalist groups.

I found Leo Junker a difficult character to like, and he has many problems in this second book of the series. The traumatic events he’s struggling to overcome occur in the first book, and I suspect he comes across as a much more sympathetic character for anyone who’s been with the series since the beginning. There is also rather too much jumping backwards and forwards in time, and too many viewpoint characters for my liking – it makes the narrative disjointed and difficult to follow at times.

Still, there is much to commend in this complex and tightly-plotted novel, with the backdrop of rising right-wing nationalism in Sweden as an uncomfortable reflection of contemporary politics world-wide.

Fans of Scandinavian noir should definitely check this one out.