En esta segunda entrega, tras haber familiarizado a sus lectores con la fria region de Suecia donde Wallander es jefe de policia, Mankell traslada al inspector fuera de su jurisdiccion, al vecino pais de Letonia. En la capital debe investigar la muerte de dos letones, cuyos cadaveres llegaron a la costa sueca, paradojicamente, a bordo de un bote salvavidas. Acosado por sus problemas de salud, sus remordimientos por desatender a su anciano padre o la angustia por la separacion de su mujer y la perdida de contacto con su hija, la vida del inspector dara un vuelco cuando conozca a Baiba Lepa, una mujer que agregara a los conflictos politicos de Letonia las turbulencias propias del amor. / Set against the chaotic backdrop of eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mankell's intense, accomplished mystery, the last in his Kurt Wallander series (Firewall, etc.), explores one man's struggle to find truth and justice in a society increasingly bereft of either. Here the provincial Swedish detective takes on a probably fruitless task: investigating the murders of two unidentified men washed up on the Swedish coast in an inflatable dinghy. The only clues: their dental work suggests they're from an Eastern Bloc country; the raft is Yugoslavian. But their deaths mushroom into an international incident that takes Wallander to Riga, Latvia, and enmeshes him in an incredibly dangerous and emotionally draining situation, battling forces far larger than the ""bloodless burglaries and frauds"" he typically pursues in Sweden. In Riga, Wallander must deal with widespread governmental corruption, which opens his eyes to the chilling reality of life in the totalitarian Eastern Bloc: grim, harrowing and volatile. Wallander's introspection and self-doubt make him compellingly real, and his efforts to find out what happened to those men on the life raft makes for riveting reading. There's a pervasive sense of Scandinavian gloom, in Wallander and in the novel, that might be difficult for some American readers, but this is a very worthy book-a unique combination of police procedural and spy thriller that also happens to be a devastating critique of Soviet-style Communism. Reed Business Information