Karin Wahlberg

Carl-Ivar Olssson, the carpet dealer, lives in the small Swedish town of Oskarshamm. He is happily married to Birgitta, a nurse at the local hospital. His carpet business is highly respected and he frequently goes to Istanbul for business and holidays. On this occasion he and Birgitta, married for something like 40 years, went to Istanbul: he for a conference and she for a holiday. Birgitta returns home ahead of Carl-Ivar, and two days later he is dead, brutally murdered on a Bosphorus show more ferry.

DEATH OF A CARPET DEALER combines plot elements we have seen many times before like the revelation that Carl-Ivar has a secret life, with a fairly traditional police procedural, and a carefully plotted many-layered story, that reminded me a little of a flower opening. Oskershamm is one of those relatively small places it seems, where people's lives overlap rather in the manner of a Venn diagram. So the author is able to bring new threads into the novel, each one a separate story.

Wahlberg has peopled this novel with some very well drawn characters and believable scenarios. For example the carpet dealer is murdered just at the wrong time for Chief Inspector Claes Claesson who is about to take paternity leave. This will be his second daughter with wife Veronika Lundborg, doctor at the local hospital, under some sort of cloud with a "Doctor Death" reputation. It isn't just the murder that connects Claes and Veronika to the carpet dealer though. Claes has inherited a very old carpet that is currently with the carpet dealer for repair. This scenario is just one example of the delightful webbing that connects this community.

Some of the action of the novel takes place in Istanbul where Claesson and a Turkish speaking colleague go to collaborate with the Istanbul police in tracking down the murderer of the carpet dealer. I enjoyed revisiting the city which I have explored at least twice in the flesh.

I am wondering whether DEATH OF A CARPET DEALER is actually the debut of the series. It is characterised by that careful and detailed creation of characters that we often see at the beginning of a police procedural series. I for one will be very happy to read another. show less

Readers who like the British-style mysteries in which a lot of the characters’ time is spent taking tea and fixing meals and gardening and allowing the reader to get to know everyone will appreciate this book. It is not for those who prefer the roller-coaster experience.

This is the sixth mystery in the Claes Claesson series, featuring Police Commissioner Claes Claesson and his wife Veronika Lundborg, a doctor at Oskarshamn Hospital. The author used to work as a doctor there, and the scenes show more taking place in the hospital have an air of authenticity one doesn’t usually find in crime novels.

As the story begins, Carl-Ivar Olsson, a local rug dealer, is murdered while in Istanbul on a rug-buying trip. Thus Claes and one of his fellow officers who speaks Turkish, Mustafa Ozen, have to make a trip to Istanbul to investigate the crime. Meanwhile back in Oskarshamn, there are further crimes related to Olsson’s store and Turkish rugs, and at times, the hijinks come to resemble those in Jo Nesbo’s Headhunters, another crime novel dealing with objets d′art. For the most part, however, the story is a slow-moving and realistic-seeming depiction of the quotidian progression from crime to resolution, with the investigating principals juggling home and work life, errands and kids, and the need for evidence versus the difficulty of obtaining it.

In the course of resolving the crime, we, along with the police, come to learn a great deal about the religious, cultural, and historical significance of different kinds of Turkish carpets and rugs. There isn’t too much of it, yet it is interesting enough that one wishes the book included illustrations! (Fortunately for us, we can supplement our reading with the Internet; there is a lovely post with info and pictures on Wikipedia, here.)

Evaluation: In spite of this book being part of a series, I was in no way hampered by a lack of knowledge about the previous five books. I found the book entertaining, if not a page-turner. The detailed confession at the end of the book didn’t seem realistic to me. It added a bit of interest, however, that two other crimes were left unresolved, even though the police knew the likely perpetrators. show less

Karin Wahlberg is the author of a long-running series featuring chief inspector Claes Claesson of Oskarshalm, a small port city in Smaland, Sweden. The first to be published in English translation appears to be the eighth in the series. That doesn’t detract much from the reading experience, as the story doesn’t demand previous familiarity with the characters.

The book opens on a ferry in Istanbul, where an elderly carpet dealer from Sweden is enjoying the passage across the Bosporus. At show more least, he’s enjoying himself until someone stabs him in the chest. Who would have committed such a crime in broad daylight, taking advantage of the crowd leaving the ferry to melt away, undetected? And why would someone want to kill a harmless old Swede? Claes is called away from parental leave to check in with the Turkish police investigating the crime. One of his colleagues, a Turkish-Swedish officer, finds himself attracted to Merve Turpan, a detective inspector who is competently handling the Turkish investigation. But before long, the Swedish police realize the roots of the crime most likely lie at home.

This is an old-fashioned, amiable, rambling sort of a book, one that takes its time following various characters about, and giving us a tour of Istanbul that is pleasant and interesting, though punctuated with travelogue info-dumps that are not woven very smoothly into the storyline. I’m always complaining that books are too long, and this one (at 390 pages) is no exception. It may have been my distracted mood while reading the book, but I found it hard to keep focused on the story as we hopped from one character to another, none of them enormously vivid (though a nervous Turkish tea salesman on board the ferry sticks with me, for some reason). I enjoyed the company of the main characters, and would have liked to spend more time with Merve, but I’m afraid overall it’s a book I’m forgetting much more quickly than I turned the pages. If given the choice of a formulaic thriller or Death of a Carpet Dealer, I would gladly choose the latter, but on the whole I’d rather read something else.

None of this vague dissatisfaction is the fault of the translator, Neil Betteridge, who has done an admirable job. I just have a feeling this is a book that doesn't suit my personal tastes. The publisher, Stockholm Text (who kindly provided me with a copy) has made a lengthy excerpt available online so readers can see if it’s up their alley or not. show less

En gråkall novemberdag hittas en ung kvinna flytande i vassen vid en ödslig strand. Hon är mördad, men trots att hon varit död en tid verkar ingen ha saknat henne. Vem var den unga Malin egentligen? Och vem är mannen hon skriver om i sin hemliga dagbok?: "Detta år slutar bra. Jag har fått en vän. Kanske mer än en vän?"

När kriminalkommissarie Claes Claesson börjar nysta i historien visar det sig snart att trådarna leder till ett antal helt vanliga människor i den lilla show more sydsvenska staden. Men ändå är det något som inte stämmer. Att kommissarien själv är nybliven småbarnspappa och dessutom råkat ut för sitt livs första ryggskott gör inte tillvaron mindre komplicerad. show less