Sun and Shadow

Summary: DCI Erik Winter, newly bereaved of his father, is confronted with a gruesome double-homicide of two sexual "swingers", the possibility of involvement within his own ranks, and a pattern of clues that suggests that his partner, pregnant with their first child, may be at risk.

I am a fan of Penguin mysteries. I will often buy one even if I'm not familiar with the author, because I've found them to be consistently well-written and well-crafted as mysteries. I came across this one in a second hand store, by Swedish crime writer Åke Edwardson. I was not disappointed but it took reading the first hundred pages to fully engage my attention. After that, I was riveted.

In the first hundred pages, we are introduced to the characters, show more especially Detective Chief Inspector Erik Winter, impeccably dressed, a lover of jazz, and engaged in a serious relationship with Angela, a doctor who is bearing their first child. Much of the first part of the book is taken up with his final visit with his dying father in Spain, interrupted by a bloody double murder involving sexual "swingers" back in Gothenburg. We are introduced to Patrik, a newspaper carrier who in fact saw the murderer and first suspects something is not right in the flat where the murder occurred, his girlfriend, Maria, the building caretaker who reports the murder (and is also caretaker in Winters' building), and the police who work with Winter. As it turns out, all this scene-setting and character development is important as we follow Winter into the investigation.

Winter's investigation centers around clues left by the murderer. A cassette of "black metal" music with its lyrics. The word "Wall" written in blood with the "W" circled. The beheaded heads of the victims swapped on their bodies. Then there are the calls to his flat when only Angela is there. The presence of someone in the caretaker's basement cubbyhole in his building. A second murder of another "swinging" couple. A crime psychiatrist thinks the clues point toward someone who wants to be stopped. By Winter. Evidence points to a policeman or someone dressing as one. Can the people around Winter be trusted? Is Angela and their baby in danger?

One finds oneself more and more drawn into the suspense as the killer and Winter get closer to each other. Skillful misdirection has us suspecting several different individuals even as we approach the book's climax. The plot is dark, yet we have decent people wrestling with the profound realities of life against the gruesome backdrop. I was delighted to discover at the Penguin Random House website that there are at least four other Erik Winter mysteries available. Winter is a well-drawn character, and Edwardson a fine writer whose work I want to come back to. I think you will as well. show less

Such fun - at first, the clues are so obvious, that you start to think the writer's not very good. Then as the clues start to pile up - all pointing in different directions - you have the delicious fun of an author telling a crashingly good murder mystery with a twinkle in his eye. Yes, it's gruesome (it's a Scandinavian murder mystery after all), but Edwardson has a wonderful touch.

Another police procedural from Sweden's Ake Edwardson, featuring Erik Winter -- the youngest chief inspector in Sweden, and perhaps the buzziest in Swedish crime fiction. This is a good read, suspenseful enough to keep the pages turning, with enough "personal stuff" to add interest. Still, I find Winter less interesting than several other Scandinavian cops -- as an old person, I prefer the more complex and less self-confident types.

The murderplot of this Swedish police crime is badly constructed and nearly useless.
The novel has too many side stories to ever become truly thrilling, and the similarities to Arne Dahl's Misterioso makes it seem unoriginal.
The police investigation into a gruesome double murder continuously takes a backseat to the personal troubles of too many peripheral characters to care about. Yet the superficial way they are described makes them seem incidental and two dimensional and the narrative conventions unfulfilled in an uninteresting way.
The short sentences tries to whip up a tension that the actual plot doesn't support. The actual solving of the case seems abrupt and deus ex machina - as if the author just lost interest in the story - and show more neither it no the epilogue provide any closure.
The story earns some points for the protagonist - I am getting bored with the Beck, Wallander, Erlender of scandinavian crime series and their life-ineptitude melancholy. Although Winter almost fits the mold, he does have a family and a life away from his policework, making him more faceted and interesting. show less

I liked this book better than the first book by Edwardson. It was a bit more fluent.
It had more fluent conversations, not so much holes between what was said and what was thought (and not explained). I could follow the story lines better, had not so much trouble following the who-dunnit-and-why.

Fact is, that I do not particularly like the writings of this author. He has created a main character that is okay to me, but his way of telling the story of the investigation does not really appeal to me.

The third of the Eric Winter series focuses on a bizarre murder case - and much of the bizarreness is up to the reader to imagine. I am starting to see the patterns of the series, which makes the stories a little more predictable but still good: each novel, Winter is introduced to a new direction of music, moving him away from his beloved jazz, each novel we get snippets of a parallel plot connected to the crime, and each novel, the ending is too rushed. In this case, Angela's disappearance and reappearance are just there, with little rhyme or reason.

Neben Henning Mankell, Hakan Nesser und Liza Marklund gilt Ake Edwardson als wichtigster Vertreter des neuen schwedischen Kriminalromans. Das vertauschte Gesicht ist Edwardsons dritter Krimi mit Kommissar Erik Winter aus Göteborg -- nach Tanz mit dem Engel und Die Schattenfrau. In seinem Privatleben steht Erik Winter, der Star der Göteborger Fahndung, vor einem wichtigen Einschnitt: Kurz vor seinem vierzigsten Geburtstag zieht Freundin Angela bei ihm ein, die ein Kind von ihm erwartet. Doch bevor er sich an die neue Lebenssituation gewöhnen kann, wird er nach Marbella, Spanien, gerufen, wo sein Vater schwer krank im Krankenhaus liegt. Während Winter am Sterbebett des Vaters an der sonnigen Costa del Sol weilt, geschieht im show more regenreichen Göteborg ein grausamer Mord an einem Ehepaar. Zurück in Schweden nimmt sich Winter dem Fall an. Doch die Ermittlungen kommen nur langsam voran. Winter verfolgt verschiedene Hinweise, die in Richtung der Death-Metal-Musikszene und Swingerclubs weisen. Erst im letzten Drittel des Buches, nach einem zweiten grausamen Doppelmord, zieht sich die Schlinge um den psychisch schwer gestörten Täter, der aus Winters unmittelbaren Umfeld kommt, langsam zusammen. Doch parallel dringt auch der Täter immer tiefer in Winters Leben ein... Die Geschichte ist mit ihren wechselnden Erzählebenen clever und spannend aufgebaut. Verschiedene Handlungsstränge werden szenenartig eingeblendet, die Geschichte wird aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven vorangetrieben, weshalb der Leser den Ermittlungen stets ein Stück voraus ist. Damit schafft Edwardson eine Atmosphäre der Bedrohung, der sich der Leser nicht entziehen kann. Das vertauschte Gesicht hat alles, was einen guten Krimi ausmacht: atmosphärische Spannung, raffinierter Aufbau, klare Sprache und Charaktere mit psychologischem Tiefgang. --Alexandra Plath show less