Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

Synopsis
First in the Kurt Wallander series.
It was a senselessly violent crime: on a cold night in a remote Swedish farmhouse an elderly farmer is bludgeoned to death, and his wife is left to die with a noose around her neck. And as if this didn’t present enough problems for the Ystad police Inspector Kurt Wallander, the dying woman’s last word is foreign, leaving the police the one tangible clue they have–and in the process, the match that could inflame Sweden’s already smoldering anti-immigrant sentiments.
Unlike the situation with his ex-wife, his estranged daughter, or the beautiful but married young prosecuter who has peaked his interest, in this case, Wallander finds a problem he can handle. He quickly becomes obsessed with solving the crime before the already tense situation explodes, but soon comes to realize that it will require all his reserves of energy and dedication to solve.

⇒ Via: BN.com

A well made police procedural from Sweden featuring old fashioned detective work featuring character Kurt Wallander.

Never End by Ake Edwardson

Never End by Ake Edwardson

From the Publisher Detective Erik Winter is back, chasing a copycat murderer in a gritty procedural from one of Europe's most popular crime writers With twelve Erik Winter novels published in countries as diverse as Italy, Norway, France, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany-where the series has sold more than 700,000 copies-it's only a matter of time before an American readership discovers what Europe has already declared: Ake Edwardson is a European master of the stylish and gritty crime novel. In Never End, the second Erik Winter novel to be translated into English, a heat wave is smothering the Swedish coastal city of Gothenburg. School is out, and parks and beaches are teeming with people. But a spate of unsolved rape/murders casts a disturbing shadow on this particular summer. Chief Inspector Erik Winter, now forty-one and a father, assembles the scant but grisly details of the crimes, and begins to see an eerie connection to a five-year-old unsolved rape/murder, a case he, in typically obsessive fashion, has refused to let go cold. Has the same rapist reemerged to taunt the police and flaunt his stolen freedom, or are these copycat crimes? In the absence of any hard leads, and haunted by the case he could not solve, Winter desperately hunts for a link bridging the victims, convinced that each crime holds the key to the others. Someone knows more than they are letting on, and Winter knows they are running out of time. Never End is a chilling, moody novel replete with Hitchcockian depictions of Gothenburg's vibrant summer spaces and seamy dark corners, that will appeal to readers of George Pelecanos and Elizabeth George

[Via : Barnes & Noble.com - Books: Never End, by Ake Edwardson, Hardcover ]