Genre: Crime
Published: 2005
Personal rating: 3/5
Yearly count: 9
I have to say, The Shadow in the River is unlike any other Scandicrime novel I have ever read. No cold setting with ice and snow, but a heat wave instead. No beautiful, pristine landscape, but a polluted, declined ex-industrial town. It’s surprising, to say the least, but it’s also nice to see a different side of Scandinavia.
Unfortunately this book was not nearly as good as the last Scandicrime novel I read (Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardottir). I didn’t really like the main character, but the flow and pace of the story was good enough for me to keep reading. About halfway through the book several things happen at once that changes the situation in such a way that the main character becomes active instead of deliberately passive in the events – which definitely helped the book in my opinion. I never did like passive characters much.
In the end things are a little worse and nothing is really resolved. There isn’t even an inkling of a happy end. It fits the tone of the book, but it’s not exactly cheerful. I’m still not entirely sure what I should think of the ending – if I like it or not. Either way, it fits my feelings about the book. I kind of liked it and I kind of didn’t. It averages out to three stars. There were many things I liked about the book and a few big things I didn’t. But all in all it was a fairly good book.
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