Book # 2, in Inspector Erik Winter series and book #5 in the English version

The order in which this series is translated in English is quite bizarre but don’t let this concern you this is a decent police procedural, intricately constructed and stuffed with details of crime investigations (way too much in my books). Most of all, this mystery stands on its own, no worries if you start here.

In a prose that is bleak, Mr. Edwardson takes as its backdrop the Biker War in Sweden in the mid-1990 however he only mentions this in the opening pages. As the tradition imposes the story opens with the discovery of a woman’s body and the following pages are taken up with Winter and his colleagues investigation into her identity and solving the murder. Their efforts are slow, excruciating slow, minutia details, pages after pages of boring discussions, interrogations, etc.…. As the story plods along there are talks about illegal immigrants, relations between Swedes and Danes and some personal anecdotes. We need persistence to be rewarded. Mr. Edwardson does come through in his own time but far too late for my enjoyment. With its stilted dialogue, choppy narrative, plot twists that are hard to follow and a story without charismatic characters, I would describe “The Shadow Woman” as a lackluster installment to this series and by far not my preferred.

Having said this, I will nevertheless see what “Sail of Stone” has in store for me….one day…

Remember how I posted once that every sex scene in a book I'm listening to will come up when I'm in the shower and the book is on speaker? EVERY. FREAKING. TIME! This book is even worse because they're freaking DREAMS. Interminably long, excruciatingly detailed, tedious sex dreams. Why? Just . . . why? Is it because it is going to be a while before any real sex happens? I don't know, but it's super obnoxious. I have the worst luck.

 

There is a lot of tedious excruciatingly detailed writing in this book. I can't believe I'm as far through it as I am because not much has happened yet, really.

 

On the plus side it is kind of reminding me of The Long Kiss Goodnight.

 

 

I love that movie.

Imagine you wake up one morning and you not only don't recognize the face in the mirror, but you can only remember the last three years of your life. You don't know how long you've been working with your present employer. You can't recall buying your car or even moving into your current residence. Everything in your life seems wrong.

This is what happens to Lizette Henry. Every time she tries to remember more than the past three years, she becomes nauseated and has an unbearable headache. If that wasn't enough to deal with she also has this sense that she is being watched and she doesn't know why. Lizette's paranoia is based in reality . . . she is being watched. Fortunately, one of Lizette's watchers is a man that is her protector. As Lizette decides to search for answers to her life, she winds up on the run from a government agency. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game where Lizette is running away from the bad guys (the government agents) and the good guys. Will she be able to recognize the good guys before it's too late?

Shadow Woman is a suspense thriller with a little bit of romance to heat things up. It seemed like the more Lizette uncovered and remembered, the more problems she encountered. It was fascinating to watch Lizette turn from an every-woman type character to super-agent as she eluded not only government agents but her protector as well. The attraction between Lizette and Xavier quickly evolved into romance as more of her memory returned. Although I found some of the action implausible (namely the subplot involving the former President and the First Lady), I enjoyed reading Shadow Woman. The suspense and thrills kept my attention throughout the book and just when I thought I had it figured out, Ms. Jackson would provide a detour that was completely unexpected. Ms. Jackson provides good guys that aren't wholly good and bad guys that aren't wholly bad, mixed with government conspiracies and rogue agents and agencies. If you're looking for a fast-paced romantic suspense-thriller then this may be just what you need.

It's difficult to tell what the main problem with this book is - the prose, or the translation. It could be either. Or both. But either way, in English, this book is clunky. The prose is distracting and frequently uses turns of phrase that make me shake my head. (Someone could see the headache? Through your skull? As opposed to just noticing that you were acting like you had a headache?) It's so devoid of elegance or grace, and isn't even serviceable. It's just bad.

But that might not be the author's fault. Might be the translation.

However, the clunky prose was accompanied by characters who frequently did inexplicable things, and made comments that rang so false and weird. Remember what I wrote about 419 by Will Ferguson, where I was saying I like books that make the strange familiar, but they have to actually do so? Like that book, this is just strange, just reactions that seem 10 degrees off of true, but with no explanation as to why. I refuse to believe it's just because I'm not Swedish.

When the mystery finally comes together at the end, it's a fairly good reveal, but the trip to get there was painful. The detectives seemed to be floundering, their bafflement about their victim meaning that I got very little sense of what was going on or that it even might tie together in the end, let alone a sense of how. I don't mind not knowing how, but for much of the book, I really felt like it might not tie together at all. That they might find the killer and it would be so entirely random as to have made reading this book pointless.

A woman is found dead in the woods. No one knows who she is. She is not on any radar, seems to have no family or friends. The young police inspector (inspector? I'm fuzzy on how Swedish police might work) Erik Winter is just coming back to work from a vacation. (I haven't read the first book in the series, so I don't know if this is vacation laden with narrative meaning that I'm just missing.)

They know the car might be a Ford Escort. Or at least, a car seen near the police scene. That's about it. Eventually, the woman's identity comes to light, but these details are like pulling teeth. Might be accurate, but then I need some good scenes with the police that explore how they deal with a case like this.  There are procedural scenes, but character development is lacking.

And boy, is it. Winter doesn't want to settle down with his girlfriend. Why? He doesn't go to see his sister or nieces very often, even though he likes them. Why? There seems to be some hostility from the brass. Why? (Maybe these are all explained in the first book, granted.) But a lot of it seems like throwing traits at the wall without thought for how they might go together.

Ultimately, this was a barely satisfying mystery. The story, when it does come together, piqued my interest slightly, but by then, it was almost too late. Perhaps in better translation, although this stiffness of prose might be the original too. Hard to say.

Please read my full review here: http://mwgerard.com/books-for-christmas/