A review by rosseroo
The Beige Man by Helene Tursten
2.0
Years ago, I quite enjoyed the first few books in the series featuring Swedish Detective Inspector Irene Huss. But my appetite for Scandinavian crime petered out, and I stopped seeking out the latest installments. I picked this seventh one up the other day, looking for something relatively short and familiar. And while it did prove to be short and familiar, it's not as good as the other books in the series I've read.
The story kicks off with a hit-and-run that starts with a car theft and ends with the discovery of a dead teenage girl, concealed in a cellar. One of the problems of the book is that there are too many disparate things going on: identifying the man killed by the hit-and-run, identifying the drivers, identifying the murdered girl, tracking down some runaways from a youth detention facility, tracing some or all of this to sex trafficking, etc... It all feels a bit jumbled, especially when Huss ends up making a trip to Tenerife to liaise with an possibly related investigation down there. (I still can't figure out why she had to travel there... other than draw things out and introduce further unnecessary side plots.)
At the same time as all this activity, the story's biggest twist (the identity of the girl's killer) is going to be pretty obvious to most readers simply because there aren't many options presented. I suppose the book's main strength is the detailing of the mechanics of sex trafficking, but as laudable as that exposure is, it's no substitute for characterization, pacing, and plot.
The story kicks off with a hit-and-run that starts with a car theft and ends with the discovery of a dead teenage girl, concealed in a cellar. One of the problems of the book is that there are too many disparate things going on: identifying the man killed by the hit-and-run, identifying the drivers, identifying the murdered girl, tracking down some runaways from a youth detention facility, tracing some or all of this to sex trafficking, etc... It all feels a bit jumbled, especially when Huss ends up making a trip to Tenerife to liaise with an possibly related investigation down there. (I still can't figure out why she had to travel there... other than draw things out and introduce further unnecessary side plots.)
At the same time as all this activity, the story's biggest twist (the identity of the girl's killer) is going to be pretty obvious to most readers simply because there aren't many options presented. I suppose the book's main strength is the detailing of the mechanics of sex trafficking, but as laudable as that exposure is, it's no substitute for characterization, pacing, and plot.