Customer Reviews

The Black Path

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have not read earlier titles by Larsson, but I will.

As a police procedural, hmmm. As a psychological novel, The Black Path is a fine unravelling of characters. So many characters, in fact, that I had huge trouble keeping them clear in my mind. As a work of fiction, the language is gorgeous, the images beautifully, even poetically expressed. I give full credit to Marlaine Delargy for a superb translation, with only occasional, subtle slips of idiom. The plot is strong, the characters are fully realised and well defined.

Then why four stars? I take a deep breath. Here goes. From page one I was drawn into the internal voice of the protagonist - I think she is the protagonist - Rebecka Martinsson, just recovering from a severely debilitating psychosis. Next, I am literally in the pants of somebody named Leif Pudas. Okay, a new voice, I see it from his eyes, very interesting. He finds a dead body in a fishing hut on a frozen lake. Then comes Inspector Anna-Maria Mella - Can this actually be the protagonist? She is in charge of investigating the mysterious corpse, setting off our police procedural. I am becoming a little worried, being pulled inside the heads of these three characters, one leaping upon the next in quick succession.

It gets more confusing. There is a Lapp child, Ester, who seems not to be entirely present in her own head; there is somebody named Sven-Erik Stålnacke (turns out he is a repeat character in this series), there is a whole family of international high-rollers, each with his/her own fully developed voice, there is even the corpse herself, from inside her head, told fully in flashbacks with flashbacks. Toward the end we even get a brief look into the murderer's head as he is going about committing the original murder -- It goes on, abruptly switching not only inside the heads of many characters, but switching without warning from the present into endless flashbacks: and here's another kicker: the present is written in the past tense, and the flashbacks are written in the present tense. You've got to learn the author's protocol right from the start.

Look. This is a novel well worth reading for the beautiful flow of language, for the fascinating characters and, in the end, for the devastating story. You just have to work it out. You have to concentrate. It's worth the effort. I would request the author to provide a dramatis personae at the start of each novel, just to keep the characters clear as we read.

Go for it. Good luck.