Sun and Shadow by
Ake Edwardson
hbk out June 05
Published by Harvill
at £10.99
Ake Edwardson's intriguing novel, the first to be published in the
UK, has a back-cover plot description that leads the reader to expect
something along the lines of a US or UK police procedural, pacy and
full of tension. What we get is something rather different.
That Edwardson's priorities may veer from the conventional is
suggested by the book's opening pages. First, patrolling the centre
of Gothenburg, Sweden's second largest city, we meet policemen
Morelius and Bartram as they deal, amongst other incidents redolent
of big cities ever here, with the consequences of unrestrained
teenage drinking. Meanwhile the jazz-loving, sharp-dressing Erik
Winter, soon to 40 and therefore "no longer the youngest chief
inspector in Sweden", is contemplating a major change in his life. He
is about to share his hitherto bachelor flat with his girlfriend
Angela - and in a few months he will become a father for the first
time. The third major presence, subtly handled so that, at first, you
are not really sure whether the scene described is real or imagined,
is that of someone who may well be a murderer.
The action of the novel takes place over seven months
surrounding the city's millenium celebrations. The murders that
trigger the major investigation are discovered two months (a hundred
or so pages) into this time frame. But meanwhile life (and low-level
policework) goes on. We meet the force's female chaplain, her
troubled daughter, the daughter's boyfriend. We get the further
recollections of the potential murderer. Most of all we get Winter's
trip to Spain, summoned there by his mother after his retired father
suffers a heart attack. There he dallies inconclusively with a
Spanish policewoman.
Nor does the pace lift much when the murder scene is discovered.
The investigation, absorbing in itself (with Laurie Thompson's highly
readable translation coping well with the various forms of death
metal music that form part of the plot) proceeds in fits and starts.
The pace is leisurely (vital crime scene results take an age to
appear, for instance). The writing, whilst often demonstrating a
quiet humanity worthy of John Harvey, is, like Winter himself, rarely
demonstrative. And the climax, when it comes, is almost entirely
without drama. There is throughout, instead, a strong sense of lives
in transition, of endings and beginnings. It's as if Edwardson is
consciously kicking against, no bad thing of course, the tyrannies of
the Anglo-Saxon tradition.
With three awards from the prestigious Swedish Academy of
Detection (though not for this novel), Edwardsen is one of the top_
names in Swedish crime writing. Two novels featuring a private
detective precede the seven novels with Winter, of which this is the
third. He is clearly a writer of considerable ability. So, is this
novel a one - off, something that did not quite come off - or
something else? Without the evidence of other novels in the series,
it is difficult to say. For the time being, let's give him the
benefit of the doubt.
Sun and Shadow by
Ake Edwardson
