Death Angels (Erik Winter Series #1) Book

Am conflicted - wonderful characters and great plot, but the delivery and conclusion fell a little short (3.5 stars)

My library branch is closing down due to renovations and I found Death Angels as I was raiding the shelves - all in a selfless attempt to help them and make it so that they had less books to move, of course ;-). I was intrigued, since I've been wanting to read more mysteries and thrillers, and what with the recent rage for Swedish writers I thought Ã…ke Edwardson would be interesting to try.

Praise
The mystery itself - as in the actual plot - was good and engaging. The crimes are horrid (though in some things we're not given details, but re: below) and as the murders pile up you're increasingly anxious to figure it all out and have the murderer unmasked.

The characters were the second strength of the book, and in some ways may have outshone the plot. Erik Winter, who is our main copper and the man whom the series follows, is very complex and interesting. He's a player, a little disengaged emotionally, and in some ways of a snob, but he's oddly likable and I ended up becoming very fond of him. I also loved Macdonald, his counterpart in England, and thought the juxtaposition between the two of them was great.

The other characters, including Winter's team, are equally compelling, though I'll admit I got very confused between Beckman / Bolger / Bergenhem / Birgersson and Malmström / Möllerström and Helander / Halder and etc. I love how the author gave the easiest name to remember (Winter) to the one character whom we're not going to get confused about anyway - the hero!! I read a Japanese novel recently and while I had no problems keeping those foreign (to me) names straight, I was embarrassingly confused here.

Criticism
I always felt like I was missing something - like there were passages or pages that had somehow been left out, or characters were having conversations or making discoveries while I was "out of the room." It was like I was always a few steps behind and while the characters were making these jumps and assumptions, I had no idea where they were coming from and what was leading them to this place or that place. Also, while we're given certain hints as to what the murders entail, there is not a lot of detail - either about what exactly is being done or for what possible psychological purpose (besides for the obvious).

In some ways, this worked out well because it is a mystery book, so there were some points where the confusion added - positively - to my experience as a reader. One example of this is how the POV of some of the victims and the killer are interwoven into the plot, but very subtly (obviously not referring to the blatant killing scene which starts the book) so that you'll be a few paragraphs and realize, 'Woah, this isn't Winter (or Macdonald or whoever), I'm on the other side of the story here!'

Many times, however, it left me feeling lost, and not in a good mystery-reading way. I'm definitely no Albert Einstein, but I'm reasonably intelligent and pretty quick, so I don't think it was all me. Maybe this is just Edwardson's style - I don't know, I guess I'll find that out when I read his next book - but either way it didn't work for me. It left me feeling very unsatisfied at the end, as if I had been five steps behind, just chasing a shadow around bends and curves, and then when I finally caught up everything was out to see and had been fully discovered ... leaving me floundering and disappointed. Especially because even after that - even in the end! - there were still things left unexplained that I was confused about.

Lovely Poem
Inscribed on an obelisk seen by Winter at the end of the book:
Wild birds plow their way through the far reaches of space.
How many never reach their final destination.
But what difference does that make?
They die free.
Bottom Line
I would recommend this book, but get it from the library. Edwardson definitely has potential and there were so many things I did like about Death Angels that I already have a hold on the next one in the series ... I'm just hoping I don't have the same "left behind" feeling that I did here.

Chief Inspector Erik Winter Series
(As of May 2011, only books 1-5 have been translated into English)
Book 1 - Death Angels
Book 2 - The Shadow Woman
Book 3 - Sun and Shadow
Book 4 - Never End
Book 5 - Frozen Tracks
Book 6 - Segel aus Stein
Book 7 - Zimmer Nr. 10.
Book 8 - Vänaste land
Book 9 - Nästan död man
Book 10 - Den sista vintern