Tuesday, 1 May 2012

Review - Another Time ,Another Life by Leif GW Persson

My Thanks to Lynsey at Transworld for a review copy.

book cover of Another Time, Another Life by Leif G W Persson

Doubleday; First Edition edition (15 Mar 2012)


My Review 3 stars ***

This complicated crime thriller begins in 1975, with the Baader Meinhof storming of the West German Embassy in Sweden. Fourteen years later in 1989, a seemingly unrelated murder causes logicistical problems for Swedish detectives, Bo Jarnebring and Anna Holt. The novel then fast forwards to 1999, when Lars Johansson from the Swedish Security Police, in his endeavour to tie up some departmental loose ends, finds that there are links between all these historic events, and he enlists the help of detectives, Jarnebring and Holt, in an attempt to piece together all the jigsaw fragments of evidence.


Leif GW Persson is an established Scandinavian crime fiction writer and his ability to weave together a complicated plot is well recognised in his native country. However, I struggled to read this book, due in part to the often disorganised narrative, which I felt was something lacking in translation rather than bad writing. It took me a while to fully understand all the nuances of the story, and had to flip backwards and forwards in order to make sense of the plot.

The over complexity of both the plot, and characters made this a difficult book for me to read and enjoy.



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2 comments:

  1. Espana6 June 2012 at 03:35

    This is a very good mystery. It is translated from Swedish and has a clinical documentary style to it. I'm unsure if the author intended this style or it came from the translation but it works well for this story. The majority of the story deals with the murder investigation and the techniques used by the Swedish police. This section is very interesting and as good a police procedural as you'll read. The character development of the major characters is well done and the author gives them enough of a back-story to make you care about them. The section of the book that deals with the investigation of a potential government minister reads like an investigative journalist report. You can really imagine this stuff happening!

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    1. Jaffareadstoo.....6 June 2012 at 13:42

      Thank you for taking the time to comment and for sharing your thoughts on this book.

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