The Shadow Woman: A Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novel
by Ake Edwardson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ake EdwardsonTranslator: Per Carlsson
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2010-09-28
ISBN: 0143117947
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of The Shadow Woman: A Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novel
Book Review: Murder in a Swedish heat wave
Summary: 5 Stars
Sweden's youngest ever chief inspector (37) cuts his vacation short when one of his team - a black, Swedish-born woman - has her jaw broken at the annual Gothenburg party, an outdoor late-summer festival at which nativist thugs get drunk and run amok, often in motorcycle gangs.
Gothenburg is sweltering in an August heat wave and Winter shows up for work in cut-offs, a rock band tee shirt and uncut hair - quite a contrast to his usual designer suits and perfect grooming. The attack on his officer has provoked an unaccustomed rage and he unleashes it on his ex-brother-in-law, a criminal with racist ties. "Winter opened his eyes again and looked at his hands. Were they his? It had felt good clenching his fingers around Vennerhag's jaw."
It doesn't take long to round up the attackers, but a murdered woman found in a lakeside ditch effectively ends Winter's vacation. She has no id or identifying marks; her fingerprints aren't in any database and no one has reported her missing, though the autopsy shows she's had a child.
Winter, who finds himself musing on the nature of evil and the urge to fight violence with violence, sets his team in motion, chasing down every lead they can think of, no matter how thin:
"An investigation is a great big vacuum cleaner that sucks in everything: witness statements and forensic evidence, sound ideas and crazy hunches, most of it completely irrelevant to the case. Eventually you find things that fit together. Then you can formulate a hypothesis."
It takes almost half the book to trace the woman's identity. Meanwhile the narrative breaks for interludes with a child held captive and missing her mother and a lonely old lady growing anxious about her missing neighbors.
A police procedural with a strong psychological bent, Gothenburg author Edwardson's series (Death Angels) stays primarily on Winter, while branching out to include details of his team's private lives and aspirations. Winter himself is on the brink of a life choice, spurred by his girlfriend Angela's ultimatum.
The prose is Scandinavian spare with a vivid sense of place only occasionally confusing to an American audience. Fans of Scandinavian crime fiction will love Edwardson.
Summary of The Shadow Woman: A Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novel
The second installment of the internationally best selling Erik Winter series
It's August and the annual Gothenburg Party is in full swing. But this year the bacchanalian blowout is simmering with ethnic discord spurred by nativist gangs. When a woman is found murdered in the park-her identity as inscrutable as the blood-red symbol on the tree above her body-Winter's search for her missing child leads him from sleek McMansions to the Gothenburg fringes, where "northern suburbs" is code for "outsider" and the past is inescapable-even for Sweden's youngest chief inspector. Psychologically gripping and socially astute, The Shadow Woman puts this master of Swedish noir on track to build an American audience on par with his international fame.
It's August and the annual Gothenburg Party is in full swing. But this year the bacchanalian blowout is simmering with ethnic discord spurred by nativist gangs. When a woman is found murdered in the park-her identity as inscrutable as the blood-red symbol on the tree above her body-Winter's search for her missing child leads him from sleek McMansions to the Gothenburg fringes, where "northern suburbs" is code for "outsider" and the past is inescapable-even for Sweden's youngest chief inspector. Psychologically gripping and socially astute, The Shadow Woman puts this master of Swedish noir on track to build an American audience on par with his international fame.
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