Tangled Web UK Review June 2007
Never End by
Ake Edwardson
pbk out June 07
(Vintage)
at £6.99
This is the second Ake Edwardson book to be translated into English, following
Sun and Shadow. But even that book was not the first in the Inspector Erik Winter series,
being Edwardson's third. So some back story is missing, but that doesn't matter. Every
book stand alone on its own merits. And what merits. Edwardson has worked as a
journalist and press officer for the UN, and has written books on journalism and creative
writing. He also writes for children. Why haven't we been offered access to his books
sooner?
Gothenburg, in the height of summer, and it's hot. You see Sweden isn't always
snow and frozen lakes. Detective Chief Inspector Erik Winter is called to attend a rape
case. Jeanette Bielke's happy teenage life has been shattered by an attack in a popular
park in the city. As Winter's colleagues, Inspectors Fredrik Halders and Aneta Djanali,
follow it up they become suspicious of both the father, and the girl's boyfriend Mattias.
Then Angelika Hansson is found raped and murdered in the same spot. Winter is also
troubled about an unsolved rape and murder – that of Beatrice Wagner five years earlier.
Is this a serial rapist in action? How do the three cases link up, and why did Jeanette not
get killed in the same way with a strap or dog lead? As the slim leads are pursued, we
see the contrast between Winter's solid family life with wife Angele, and baby daughter
Elsa, and that of the families of the victims concerned. Halders also has a private life that
is shattered by the unexpected death of his estranged wife. Djanali, a black refugee from
Burkino Faso, supports him as best she can. The only real link is photographs of the girls
against an interior backdrop of a bare brick wall. Winter worries at this like a persistent
terrier until the truth is teased out.
This is cool police procedural at its best. The clues are all there in the files,
records and photographs, down to a single shirt button found at the scene. It then takes
persistence and dogged effort to reveal them for what they are. That's not to say that
Winter is emotionless. His very persistence is driven by his emotions concerning the
girls whose lives are cut horribly short, and he often visits the place of their death.
Edwardson's style is spare and cool, and though a review of his earlier book in translation
criticised him for not fleshing out his stories and characters, it is this very spareness that
makes his books so readable and stylish. It's Elmore James who has as one of his tenets
the avoidance of adverbs. Edwardson's writing reminds me of Elmore James' in being
pared coolly to the bone to express Winter's eponymous nature. This is a tale not of fast-
paced, flashy intuition and startling revelations, but cool deduction and intense drama.
Look out for the next in the series, and beg the publisher to translate the earlier ones too.
Inspector Winter is a classic.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
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