kchisholm's review against another edition
3.0
As Leif G.W. Persson is a new author for me, I was interested to read the bio in this book:
"Leif Persson is the Grand Master of Scandinavian crime fiction. Over three decades, he has taken a scalpel to the political and social mores of Swedish society in dark, complex and satirical crime novels. His work melds the social realism of a Balzac or a Dickens with the hard-boiled street smarts of a James Ellroy."
Whatever that means..... More importantly, the blurb eventually goes on to note that he is the author of nine novels, with BETWEEN SUMMER'S LONGING and WINTER'S END being the first translated into English.
This is a massive door stopper of a book at 551 pages, and I will confess to being more than a little concerned about how much of that could possibly be filled by the story of a doubtful suicide of an unknown American in Stockholm. But this book has one of the all-time great opening sequences. One of those "right, let's get into this!" sort of opening sequences which just grabbed interest and seemed to set things off at a snorting pace. From there, well things got ... odd. I've been thinking about this for a while now and I suspect that's going to be the best explanation I can come up with. Before things got very odd. Profoundly odd really. The plot is dense to the point of condensed treacle. It seems to head off in all sorts of directions in short, sharp bursts of viewpoints, snippets, back story, future stories and around in circles and back down laneways and into blind alleys to the point where, frankly, I wasn't sure which book I was still reading about half-way through.
I suspect that the author has a tremendous sense of humour though, and there's a great deal of laugh out loud dark, satirical humour here. That's not to say that the point is humorous - far from it really. It's alternatively funny, shocking, thought-provoking and quite confrontational. There also seems to be a cast of thousands. There were people popping in and out of the story all over the place, and threads wandering in and out of the narrative like they'd got lost in the post somewhere. Combine that jack-in-a-box behaviour with the humour and I did develop a sneaking feeling that we were actually playing some sort of written form of "Whack a Mole". I understand this is book one in a trilogy however, and it could be that a lot of the ins and outs of CIA operatives, secret papers, code names, secret police, corrupt and incompetent governments, Cold War complications and whatever else I've forgotten was going on, will be clarified in the later books once they are released. And here's a quiet plea to please translate the things in order - without too long a delay - so that readers who are interested have got a hope of clinging to the threads!
To be perfectly honest, I finished this book with absolutely NO idea what I was supposed to take away from it. I'm still profoundly confused about what was going on. But if part of the destination is the journey, then this was a ride no doubt about that. I loved the satirical tone, and I didn't mind the odd madcap sort of style. I can live with the idea that I've finished the book with very little idea of what it was all about. Whilst I will be waiting for the following two books, this isn't necessarily a book I'd recommend with no reservations. I think that a reader of BETWEEN SUMMER'S LONGING AND WINTER'S END who enjoys it, is going to be somebody that is open to something very different, happy with a rollercoaster of a ride to more questions than answers, and keen to try something that, to be perfectly frank, is completely and utterly different. And just that little bit odd.
"Leif Persson is the Grand Master of Scandinavian crime fiction. Over three decades, he has taken a scalpel to the political and social mores of Swedish society in dark, complex and satirical crime novels. His work melds the social realism of a Balzac or a Dickens with the hard-boiled street smarts of a James Ellroy."
Whatever that means..... More importantly, the blurb eventually goes on to note that he is the author of nine novels, with BETWEEN SUMMER'S LONGING and WINTER'S END being the first translated into English.
This is a massive door stopper of a book at 551 pages, and I will confess to being more than a little concerned about how much of that could possibly be filled by the story of a doubtful suicide of an unknown American in Stockholm. But this book has one of the all-time great opening sequences. One of those "right, let's get into this!" sort of opening sequences which just grabbed interest and seemed to set things off at a snorting pace. From there, well things got ... odd. I've been thinking about this for a while now and I suspect that's going to be the best explanation I can come up with. Before things got very odd. Profoundly odd really. The plot is dense to the point of condensed treacle. It seems to head off in all sorts of directions in short, sharp bursts of viewpoints, snippets, back story, future stories and around in circles and back down laneways and into blind alleys to the point where, frankly, I wasn't sure which book I was still reading about half-way through.
I suspect that the author has a tremendous sense of humour though, and there's a great deal of laugh out loud dark, satirical humour here. That's not to say that the point is humorous - far from it really. It's alternatively funny, shocking, thought-provoking and quite confrontational. There also seems to be a cast of thousands. There were people popping in and out of the story all over the place, and threads wandering in and out of the narrative like they'd got lost in the post somewhere. Combine that jack-in-a-box behaviour with the humour and I did develop a sneaking feeling that we were actually playing some sort of written form of "Whack a Mole". I understand this is book one in a trilogy however, and it could be that a lot of the ins and outs of CIA operatives, secret papers, code names, secret police, corrupt and incompetent governments, Cold War complications and whatever else I've forgotten was going on, will be clarified in the later books once they are released. And here's a quiet plea to please translate the things in order - without too long a delay - so that readers who are interested have got a hope of clinging to the threads!
To be perfectly honest, I finished this book with absolutely NO idea what I was supposed to take away from it. I'm still profoundly confused about what was going on. But if part of the destination is the journey, then this was a ride no doubt about that. I loved the satirical tone, and I didn't mind the odd madcap sort of style. I can live with the idea that I've finished the book with very little idea of what it was all about. Whilst I will be waiting for the following two books, this isn't necessarily a book I'd recommend with no reservations. I think that a reader of BETWEEN SUMMER'S LONGING AND WINTER'S END who enjoys it, is going to be somebody that is open to something very different, happy with a rollercoaster of a ride to more questions than answers, and keen to try something that, to be perfectly frank, is completely and utterly different. And just that little bit odd.
rouver's review against another edition
3.0
This book is likely a 4 star book, but my preference for it was a 2, so I split the difference with a 3. It's a translation from Swedish, and I think that part of the problem could be a large difference in cultures. A lot of time, characters weren't given a name, but were simply referred to by their job title. This book was supposedly the inspiration for the tv show "Backstrom," which is why I picked it up. I have NO idea how they at all connected this book to the show, other than there is a *side character* by the name of Backstrom who is a total asshole. That's it. As far as I could tell, he wasn't even that competent. This book is probably great, but it wasn't to my tastes.
katherineannpotter's review against another edition
1.0
I skipped from about halfway through to the end. Dull and difficult to understand what time period we are in given the changes are only a month or so apart. I wanted to like it but cannot recommend.
veethorn's review against another edition
3.0
He writes like he speaks, the good professor. But it's a good novel and an all-too-convincing take on our most famous murder.
booklovervictoriaperz's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
kellym_16829's review
challenging
informative
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Book one of the slow but compelling Swedish crime trilogy
astroneatly's review
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.5
hayesstw's review against another edition
3.0
Over the last 10 years or so Scandinavian crime fiction has come to dominate the genre in the English-speaking world. Many of the books in the genre have a gloomy boozy divorced (or about to be) detective as protagonist. This one is different.
There is no protagonist. We are given glimpses into the lives and loves and hates of members of different branches of the Swedish police as they are touched in some way by the apparent suicide of an American journalist who fell from the 16th floor of a student residence.
The book is not well-written; in many ways there seems to be too much irrelevant detail. Describing in detail how a single protagonist spends Christmas is one thing; doing it for five or six different characters seems to be overdoing it. Some of the problems in the writing may be problems in translation rather than in the original. The writing sometimes seems stilted.
One of the more disconcerting things is that it takes one a while to work out the period the story is set in. The book was first published in 2002, so one expects it to be at around the turn of the century, but the technology doesn't fit -- there are no personal computers, only typewriters. No cell phones. The technology used would seem to date it to about the mid-1970s, but the story also concerns the investigation of a possible plot to assassinate the Swedish prime minister, which links it to the assassination of prime minister Olof Palme in 1986. Though the prime minister in the book is not named, there are sufficient resemblances in the story to make that a possible period as well.
One of the minor characters is a South African student with an improbable name, and there were stories of South African connections to the assassination of Olof Palme, and in [b:Totale aanslag|3292006|Totale Aanslag|De Wet Potgieter|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|3328499] by [a:De Wet Potgieter|504133|De Wet Potgieter|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] this is presented as historical fact. As an aside (this is not mentioned in the story, and is rather a personal anecdote), in 1988 my wife worked in a factory and the office next door to hers was used by a company that was indirectly linked. Sometimes she could not help overhearding conversations in the next door office, and she got the impression that they were involved in some shady business -- money laundering, illicit diamond buying, or something like that, and possibly the assassination of the Swedish prime minister. At about that time we had a break-in at our house, and the house was thoroughly ransacked, cupboards and boxes were emptied, but the only things that were taken were the cheap loudspeakers for our radiogram, which had been carefully unscrewed from their cabinets (the cabinets themselves were left behind), and some food. We had the impression that the thieves were looking for something very specific, which they didn't find, and the usual things that thieves took, cameras, computers etc., were left behind.
But, to get back to the book, in spite of its deficiencies, it was an interesting story, even if it was not well-told, and ultimately worth reading.
There is no protagonist. We are given glimpses into the lives and loves and hates of members of different branches of the Swedish police as they are touched in some way by the apparent suicide of an American journalist who fell from the 16th floor of a student residence.
The book is not well-written; in many ways there seems to be too much irrelevant detail. Describing in detail how a single protagonist spends Christmas is one thing; doing it for five or six different characters seems to be overdoing it. Some of the problems in the writing may be problems in translation rather than in the original. The writing sometimes seems stilted.
One of the more disconcerting things is that it takes one a while to work out the period the story is set in. The book was first published in 2002, so one expects it to be at around the turn of the century, but the technology doesn't fit -- there are no personal computers, only typewriters. No cell phones. The technology used would seem to date it to about the mid-1970s, but the story also concerns the investigation of a possible plot to assassinate the Swedish prime minister, which links it to the assassination of prime minister Olof Palme in 1986. Though the prime minister in the book is not named, there are sufficient resemblances in the story to make that a possible period as well.
One of the minor characters is a South African student with an improbable name, and there were stories of South African connections to the assassination of Olof Palme, and in [b:Totale aanslag|3292006|Totale Aanslag|De Wet Potgieter|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|3328499] by [a:De Wet Potgieter|504133|De Wet Potgieter|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] this is presented as historical fact. As an aside (this is not mentioned in the story, and is rather a personal anecdote), in 1988 my wife worked in a factory and the office next door to hers was used by a company that was indirectly linked. Sometimes she could not help overhearding conversations in the next door office, and she got the impression that they were involved in some shady business -- money laundering, illicit diamond buying, or something like that, and possibly the assassination of the Swedish prime minister. At about that time we had a break-in at our house, and the house was thoroughly ransacked, cupboards and boxes were emptied, but the only things that were taken were the cheap loudspeakers for our radiogram, which had been carefully unscrewed from their cabinets (the cabinets themselves were left behind), and some food. We had the impression that the thieves were looking for something very specific, which they didn't find, and the usual things that thieves took, cameras, computers etc., were left behind.
But, to get back to the book, in spite of its deficiencies, it was an interesting story, even if it was not well-told, and ultimately worth reading.
nightwyrm's review
4.0
Quite a complex and convoluted story. Will be interesting to see how the rest of the trilogy goes.
fmspqr's review
5.0
it took me a while to get into this book. I found the first part very fragmented and could not keep up with all the characters. But then, something clicked, and I could not stop read. I am looking forward to reading the other two books of the trilogy