Recommended Reads

Jussi Adler-Olsen has been hailed as the next Stieg Larsson.

Mercy:

At first the prisoner scratches at the walls until her fingers bleed. But there is no escaping the room. With no way of measuring time, her days, weeks, months go unrecorded. She vows not to go mad. She will not give her captors the satisfaction. She will die first.

Copenhagen detective Carl Mørck has been taken off homicide to run a newly created department for unsolved crimes. His first case concerns Merete Lynggaard, who vanished five years ago. Everyone says she’s dead. Everyone says it’s a waste of time. He thinks they’re right.

The voice in the dark is distorted, harsh and without mercy. It says the prisoner’s torture will only end when she answers one simple question. It is one she has asked herself a million times:WHY is this happening?

This is the last of the Wallander series.

A novel that works on a number of levels: as a compelling investigation into a Swedish cold-war spy ring, a philosophical assessment of policing and its social function, and a very personal evaluation of a person’s worth in the grand scheme of things…Written in Mankell’s downbeat style (beautifully translated by Laurie Thompson) it has a fatalistic tone that is entirely fitting for the final testimony of one of crime fiction’s great protagonists…a hugely satisfying novel that ranks alongside Mankell’s best, a heartbreaking tale of descent into despair and darkness that serves as a totem for what great crime writing can achieve’ –The Irish Times