This is a particularly unbalanced colleciton of stories. I listened to thi, and at 4.75 hours the main story was a huge proportion of this.comming in at over 3 hours. The other 3 stories were about 20 minutes each. This did not make for an even listening experience.
In the main story, we have the classic locked room mystery, with a death in front of a crowd of witnesses who are then unable to leave the scene, in thgis case being trapped in a hoptel by a snowstorm. One of the guests is Martin Molin, and he is a policeman. I'm not sure what type of policeman, as he seems to go about the investigation that is foisted on him in a particularly amateur way. At times he did seem very young. Some of the questions he seemingly doesn't ask seemed glaring. And, in a house full of motive, he say he can't find one. I could, a great deal of money and a yet to be signed will.
The second story features Martin again but this time he has a detective who seems to know what he is doing. The thrid and forth stories are as much mysterious as detective, as neither is solved, as such.
The writing is OK, and there are some interesting twists on the standard mystery in here. But I'm not sure that the characters grabbed me enough to read more, and the disparate size of the stories in this collection made it an uneven collection. Not a bad read, just not enough to get me comming back for more. ( )

I absolutely loved this book! Some of these short stories involved the characters from her detective novels and it did come handy having read all of them, although I think, it is possible to start with this one and later read the rest of her thrillers.

The Scent of Almonds and Other Stories are a collection of some very short but beautiful crime fiction. Each of them represents situations of people and their way of thinking. These stories include topics: rage, disrespect, revenge, disappointment, love, survival, self-loving and family relationships. It is interesting how these topics can be interpreted in crime stories and it's quite fun and sad!

I chose to start to read the stories from the back, starting with the very short one and leaving the "Scent of Almonds" as the very last. I found the book format extremely helpful when taking on journey as it was narrow and nearly half the size A5. There are less than 200 pages, excellent when taking public transport, but for longer journeys, you know yourself, you will need something extra. ( )

A nice little book in whodunnit style.
All those present at the house were considered suspects in the search for the killer(s). The story itself was nice enough, with likeable and not so nice characters.
The ending I foud disappointing. ( )

In the first story, The Scent of Almonds, you will find a unique story in that its main character is Martin Molin who I believe is the chief of police in Lackberg's highly successful series of books which follow Detective Patrik Hedstrom and his wife journalist Erika Flack.
In the detective series Molin usually sits back and lets Hedstrom do all the investigative work. This time however, Molin finds himself stranded due to an unrelenting ice storm with the family of his girlfriend Lissette on an island off the mainland when a murder occurs. Molin is confronted with a large pool of suspects each with their own secrets and stories t hide behind which only further hinders Molin's inexperience as a lead detective.
When a second murder occurs Molin finds himself in over his head. Will he be able to solve these mysterious deaths without the more experienced Det. Hedstrom? Does he have what it takes?
A puzzling, edge of your seat mystery, with continual twists and turns similar to the original series, you will find yourself engaged to the final page.
The remaining 3 stories in this book are much shorter in length, but equally engaging. Because of they are shorter in length it makes it difficult to review them without giving away the stories. I will say however, that The Widows' Café was my favorite. ( )

A side step from the series about Erica and Patrick. A colleague of Patrick, Martin, is involved. He's going on a familiy weekend with his girl friend (but the relation might not be serious enough for that). On the weekend grandpa, a great business man, is complaining about the businesses of the children and grandchildren. Then he dies during the starting dinner...

Martin becomes the cop again and has to solve what happened. Nobody can leave, because they are stuck on a island in a snow storm.

The story is nice, unexpected and realistic. A nice short read.

http://boekenwijs.blogspot.com/2010/07/sneeuwstorm-en-amandelgeur.html ( )