Rating: 3/5
Review:
Not McCall Smith's best
Like so many people, I enjoy The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
series very much. However, I have never really got on with Alexander
McCall Smith’s other work and this remains largely true of this
start of a new series.
The Department of
Sensitive Crimes is set in an odd little department of the police in
Malmo, Sweden. The location is significant: it is the setting for
both Wallander and The Bridge and McCall Smith is trying to create a
contrast to these classics of Scandi-Noir. Ulf Varg (translation:
Wolf Wolf) and his colleagues are a gentle investigative team who
look into not-terribly-serious crimes and resolve them by talking to
people, noticing details, reflecting on human nature (or a version of
human nature, at least) and generally being honest and kind. Remind
you of anything?
Yes, The Department
of Sensitive Crimes has pretty much the structure of The No. 1
Ladies’ Detective Agency, but set in Sweden. The trouble is that
while Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi, Mr J.L.B Matekoni and others have
real originality, charm and a genuine spark about them, Ulf and his
colleagues don’t really. For me they weren’t terribly
interesting people and their digressive musings just became rather
dull rather than charming.
It does have its
moments; a statement in court by a convicted man is genuinely
touching, for example, and wry sentences like “But the procedure
for procedures had to be gone through, in accordance with further
procedural guidelines,” kept me going. It’s readable and I did
finish it (with a little skimming of yet another digression every so
often) but I won’t be rushing to read the next in the series.
(My thanks to Little
Brown for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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