I absolutely loved this book and raced through it. Better than the first in the series. ( )

Ulf Varg works at the Department of Sensitive Crimes, an obscure part of the Swedish police. He lives alone with his deaf dog Martin, and dreams of somehow making a life with married colleague Anna, which he knows is impossible.

Then Anna asks him to unofficially investigate whether her husband Jo is having an affair. This puts Ulf in a bind, because his self-interest is served if it's true, but Anna would be devastated by the news. Ulf is also asked by a woman he meets to investigate whether her novelist partner is being blackmailed.

Both of these inquiries are unofficial and, indeed, the Department of Sensitive Crimes doesn't seem to do anything for the entire novel except moan about supplies. McCall Smith does a very poor job of explaining its existence at all, which undermines his premise quite a bit.

McCall Smith is a master of the mundane, and here he gives us a mundane policeman living a mundane life working at a mundane job in a mundane branch of the police carrying out two mundane inquiries in which nothing very much happens. There's just not enough going on here to warrant reading the book. If you're going to dip your toe in the icy waters of Scandinavian crime, you really need to be doing better than this.

An top of everything else, McCall Smith giving his protagonist a name that translates as "wolf wolf" is just beyond silly, even for this writer. ( )

Not quite as enjoyable as first book in the series ( )

For later

A graceful second installment in the new series about a Swedish detective in the Department of Sensitive Crimes. Detective Ulf Varg is hard not to like: his decency, combined with vulnerability and basic humanity, just wins you over. The very idea of this Department of Sensitive Crimes is food for thought too. With several good plot lines around the main character, it's another winner from A. McCall Smith. ( )