I like a lot of other Scandanavian police procedural writers (Stieg Larrson, Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell) but Camilla Lackberg lacks too much to be in that group. Her romantic subplots are distracting, uninteresting and, like much of the rest of the book, simplistic. She cannot be accused of complexity or nuance in her writing. Perhaps she could consider writing for a different age group, one that would benefit from simple, direct dialogue and plots. Ice Princess really irritated me and I gave up after trying it for 188 pages (out of about 390). I don't usually quit on a book but this one made me not want to continue. I read the last 20 pages to see how she'd wrap it up. More of same. I'd not likely read another by Lackberg unless someone told me she had had an awakening and totally changed her style and was finally writing really interesting stories.

I read Peter James' Dead Simple based on glowing reviews of this author. This, after months of Scandenavian police procedurals which were so much better written. PJ should reconsider his writing career. His character development was almost non-existent, and I was bored with the story from the get go. I could not relate to any of the characters and the story dragged for over 200 pages. Don't know why I continued to read other than to see how/whether one of the main characters survived. Would not recommend this book. On a scale where Stieg Larsson is a 10 and Jo Nesbo an 8.5, Peter James is maybe a 3.

Hakan has produced a pretty good police procedural. The Detective Chief Inspector, Van Veeteren, is reasonably well developed as a character. VV does good work as an investigator (although we are kept in the dark near the end where he figures out who the murderer is) and the labor described in the investigations is nearly overwhelming (the description itself is reasonably brief, thank goodness). Van Veeteren has access to a good crew and they are almost without blemish whereas in other police procedurals there is friction and failing in the subordinates. Maybe Hakan has an idealised view of detective work.
Swedish place names seem to have too many As in them and I wonder how the natives view this, particularly if they have had exposure to place names in other countries.

By the time I was 50 pages into the story it seemed to me that I was detecting a woman's touch to the writing. Sometimes I look at the inside of the back dust jacket and sometimes I don't. Didn't this time. Saw the first name Asa and assumed it was a male. My bad. The upshot of this is a bit more personal interior than I care for but the story was fairly well told. Unfortunately, it was a story of policework done too slowly so that by the end the killer has had time to kill himself (and his unfortunate son who was not involved at all in his father's crimes). I grade it a weak police procedural (no lists of prime suspects, officers too often overwhelmed by 'locals' including the baddy, focus mostly on one investigator (though 3 or 4 others are involved) and not much character development, a really good person is killed (aren't there enough bad people around? gotta play on my heartstrings?- Asa use your imagination!)).

I finished the book that that is saying something positive about it, I guess.

If the description of life in small Swedish villages is accurate it's a wonder more Swedish husbands aren't murdered by their wives given the amount of brutality that flows in the other direction. It would make me think twice about visiting rural Sweden and I'm a guy. Pretty depressing. Of course, I understand that Sweden is not alone in this. The USA ranks pretty low on the get along scale, to my understanding.

There are some authors who get your attention early in the story, such as Stieg Larsson, and envelope you in characters, settings and situations that are interesting, intriguing and challenging. Kjell Eriksson is not one of those. I'm on page 65 and I'm not interested in the story and the characters are pretty shallow. I keep waiting for the good stuff and nothing shows. 65 pages is enough (too much, actually: I surprise myself with my patience). It goes back to the library today.