Une fois de plus, Henning Mankell nous transporte dans un univers inquiétant, sur les traces du commissaire Wallander. Dans Les chiens de Riga, nous découvrons cette fois un environnement bien différent de sa Suède natale : les Etats baltes et plus particulièrement la Lettonie et sa capitale, Riga.Tout commence en Suède avec la découverte de deux corps à bord d’un canot. Les victimes sont apparemment originaires d’un pays de l’Est et après quelques recherches, du renfort est envoyé de l’étranger à l’équipe de Wallander. Ainsi, il fait la rencontre du major Liepa, policier letton. Alors même que l’enquête semble terminée et sur le point d’être transmise aux forces de polices de l’étranger, un retournement de situation suggère l’ampleur de l’affaire. Et si l’incident du canot n’était qu’un maillon d’une chaîne infernale ? Le commissaire s’embarque alors dans une mission des plus périlleuses dans la capitale d’un pays en plein changement de régime.Dès les premières pages, nous entrons dans le vif du sujet. Pas de détails inutiles, ni de descriptions pour nous préparer à la suite et nous mettre dans l’ambiance. Après la découverte du canot, un temps mort dans l’action s’installe, durant lequel nous en apprenons plus sur la situation de Wallander et son état d’esprit actuel. L’équipe dispose de trop peu de renseignements, l’enquête n’avance pas… Rien pour améliorer l’humeur déjà maussade du commissaire, en proie à de nombreux doutes concernant ses relations familiales et amoureuses, ainsi que son métier.L’arrivée de renfort met un peu de piment dans ce quotidien monotone. Le major Liepa est ici très important car, arrivé tout droit de Lettonie, il introduira brièvement mais efficacement les informations nécessaires à la suite concernant la situation délicate de son pays. Cette partie est calme – surtout en comparaison avec ce qui va se passer ensuite – et sert en quelque sorte de base à la suite de l’affaire.On fait alors croire au lecteur que l’affaire est terminée… mais que se passerait-il dans les trois quarts restant du roman, si c’était vraiment le cas? Un retournement inattendu va entraîner le départ de Wallander pour Riga, où il découvrira un milieu inquiétant et dangereux. Depuis là, les évènements s’enchaînent à un rythme tant incroyable qu’il est parfaitement impossible de fermer le livre avant d’avoir terminé la dernière page.Henning Mankell nous entraîne dans les sombres recoins de la Lettonie, un pays en plein changement politique où le danger et la peur règnent partout. Wallander se rend bien vite compte que sa collaboration avec la police est surveillée de tous côtés. Mais comment savoir à qui il peut faire confiance ? Et surtout, quel est le terrible secret que quelqu’un veut à tout prix l’empêcher de découvrir ?Henning Mankell décrit avec succès l’univers instable dans lequel évoluent les personnages. Impossible de savoir quels personnages sont francs ou corrompus. On ressent l’inquiétude croissante du commissaire au fil de ses rencontres et on essaie d’entrevoir de la lumière au bout de cet immense tunnel… sans succès, car le suspense est bien gardé. Jusqu’aux dernières pages, nous irons de surprise en surprise, pour en arriver à une fin du moins inattendue…Le style d’écriture est très fluide et contribue à l’escalade de la tension. Le moins qu’on puisse dire, c’est que Wallander s’embarque sans le savoir dans une aventure tout bonnement invraisemblable… et tellement différente de la Suède qu’il connaît. Sans s’en rendre compte, nous en apprenons beaucoup sur la situation et la vie en Lettonie dans les années 1990. L’auteur sème des informations dans ses dialogues et ses descriptions, ce qui nous permet de nous faire une image claire de l’environnement dans lequel évoluent les personnages sans pour autant avoir l’impression d’assister à un exposé sur le sujet. Grâce aux différents personnages locaux et aux comparaisons entre les pays occidentaux et ceux de l’Est, on peut aisément essayer d’imaginer comment était la situation à cette époque, qui est encore relativement peu connue et explorée.Henning Mankell nous offre une fois encore une enquête extrêmement bien ficelée, pleine de suspense et de rebondissements, qui prend place dans un univers propice au crime et très inquiétant. Si vous aimez les romans policiers et que vous vous intéressez à une page importante de l’histoire européenne de l’Est, vous vous laisserez sans nul doute emporter par ce roman.
You may have gathered from my other reviews (such as here and here) that the Scandinoir tsunami has broken on either side of me and left me largely unmoved. I'm tired of protagonists who are incompetent at the business of being human beings and stories full of characters who are all broken doves. So it could be that my reaction to The Dogs of Riga -- author Mankell's second Wallander novel -- is one of relief in finding an entry in this genre that didn't make me want to open a vein.Inspector Kurt Wallander, Our Hero, is a detective in a provincial town in southern Sweden. When two murdered Latvians wash up on his shores in a life raft, he ends up falling down a rabbit hole trying to solve the crime and the associated murder of his Latvian counterpart, whom he befriended earlier in the story.As seems to be the case among the Scandinavian authors I've read, Mankell is more concerned with characterization than he is with setting. We spend extensive time inside Wallander's head, and the other characters are well-realized and feel authentic. The dialog is likewise realistic and serves to both move the plot and further the characterizations. However, if you don't know what Ystad (Our Hero's hometown) looks like before reading this, you won't be any better informed afterwards. To be fair, Mankell spends more time describing Riga than he does any other location, possibly because Wallander is seeing it for the first time, and possibly because it was still considered exotic in 1992 when this book first appeared in Sweden.It's impossible to overlook the fact that when Mankell wrote this book, the dust from the fallen Berlin Wall was still blowing through central Europe and the post-Soviet era was both new and fragile. Much of the plot hinges on the political upheaval in the Baltic states and the possible threat posed by ex-Soviet hardliners wanting their empire back. That we know how this all worked out doesn't detract from the story, though, in the same way that knowing the interwar years in Europe wrecked on the twin shoals of fascism and war doesn't take away from the experience of reading an Alan Furst novel.I use that comparison advisedly, because The Dogs of Riga is as much a novel of intrigue as it is a police procedural -- perhaps even more so. Without giving too much away: Wallander finds himself involved with Latvian dissidents who are trying to resist the old-regime apparatchiks who are working to throttle Latvian democracy in its crib. There are midnight meetings, shadows to be evaded, secret messages to be passed, and a fair amount of skulking around that wouldn't be out of place in a spy novel. As a result, Wallander isn't nearly as much a human wreck as he was in Faceless Killers, and most of the non-Swedish characters are likewise acting rather than wallowing in their various dysfunctions.It's this atypical excursion into political intrigue that salvaged this book for me. Wallander is still too dithery and diffident to really engage me as a protagonist, and the general bleakness wears after a while. It could simply be that after my various other excursions with Larsson, Nesbo and Mankell, this genre is lost to me. If you're a fan, you'll probably enjoy it more than I did. I may read the next Wallander tale sometime in the future, but not soon. Three and a half stars, rounded down.
What do You think about The Dogs Of Riga (2004)?
Poor old Kurt Wallander. I just want to buy the guy a beer and tell him to quit being so hard on himself. The Swedish police detective isn’t faring much better in the second book of the series than he was in the first. Still lonely after his divorce and worried about his flighty daughter and elderly father, Wallander has also lost his best friend on the police force to cancer. The new breed of crime rising in the early ‘90s in Sweden continues to shock him and makes him uncertain whether he should even continue being a cop.When a life raft with a couple of tortured and murdered bodies washes up on shore, Wallander doubts that there will be any way to solve the crime, and when the victims turn out be from Latvia, he’s all too happy to turn the case over to the Latvian detective sent to investigate. Of course, things don’t go that smoothly and Wallander ends up having to travel to Riga and finds himself wrapped up in dangerous political and police corruption as the country struggles to free itself from the last remains of Soviet communism.Like the first novel, Faceless Killers, the main appeal in the books is the character of Wallander. A great everyman sort of detective, who is very insecure about his professional skills and private life, Wallander seems always on the verge of just giving up in frustration. Yet he always manages to keep plodding along and working on the case at hand, and showing the kind of grim determination that others call bravery even if Wallander would scoff at the idea.It’s been very interesting to read these Swedish books that were written right as communism fell in Eastern Europe. It gives a lot of new perspective to what that part of the world had to deal with.
—Kemper
I seem finally to have found a type of genre-writing that I get. This is a really fabulous, fabulous book -- better than Faceless Killers (which itself was excellent) -- a mystery set partially in the grim landscape of a decaying factory town in southern Sweden, and partially in the even grimmer setting of Latvia (Riga) during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mankell's construction of plot, and his characters show mastery.Modris Eksteins' Rites of Spring is one of the most astonishing books I have read over the last few years -- and reading Dogs of Riga puts in mind someday to read: http://www.amazon.com/Walking-Since-D...Anyway 5-stars for the Dogs of Riga
—AC
I've heard great things about the Wallander books and having visited Riga last year I thought this was a good place to start. Swedish detective Kurt Wallander begins a new investigation when two bodies wash up on the Swedish coast in a life raft. Eventually they are tracked as coming from Riga, Latvia, and a Latvian detective comes over to investigate. However, as soon as the detective returns to Riga he is murdered and Wallander heads to Riga to try and help the local police solve the crime. Before he knows it, he's caught up in a massive conspiracy and realises he can't trust anybody. Initially I was engaged by the story but gradually became less interested. It was entertaining up until the point it becomes clear one of two men is responsible and then it takes an absolute age to confirm which one is the villain. It was pages and pages of Wallander trying to avoid his shadows and get annoyed at the situation he finds himself in. The setting was a mixed blessing. Obviously the climate of early 1990s Latvia is ideal for a book involving political conspiracies. The trouble was, beyond that context the book could have been set anywhere. Mankell admits himself that he is unfamiliar with the city and beyond a mention of a few landmarks, every building and location is pretty generic. It feels odd to be more familiar with the city than the author and it's frustrating because I could really see the potential that Riga has for a crime story but it simply isn't fulfilled here. A good start and a decent leading character but this just didn't grasp my attention like a good crime thriller should.
—Dan
