Book Log 2012 #12: Detective Inspector Huss by Helene Tursten

The invasion of Scandanavian crime fiction brings not only new authors, but the catalogs of existing ones, as evidenced by this book, the first in a series featuring the title character, who plies her trade in Gothenburg, Sweden's second-largest city. The case at hand is the killing of one of the city's richest men, whose apparent suicide is quickly discovered to be something else. Family, friends and ex-cons now operating in the victim's neighborhood all come under investigation.

And that investigation seems interminable, with page after page of dialog that really felt off to me. I've run into this more than once with books in translation, and in most cases the translation either sorts itself out or I get used to whatever quirks originally bothered me. Not so with this book, which read as oddly on the last page as it did on the first.

Not helping is that for all of being the title character, I had a hard time building any interest in Huss, who doesn't appear to be any more gifted at criminal investigation than her colleagues (and in at least one case, a little less gifted, or at least a little less lucky). I suppose some of this was to come from her domestic life, mostly from having to address one daughter's decision to become a skinhead, but that wrapped up so cleanly - almost magically so - that it didn't help develop her character at all.

My other issue with the book is that it didn't use the city very well. There were long stretches where I lapsed into thinking the story took place in Stockholm, and for the most part it might as well have. Maybe I've gotten too used to Scottish crime authors making really good use of their location. 

Can't say I'd recommend this one, and don't particularly plan to continue with the series.