Review: Red Wolf

Review: Red Wolf

Review Date: 7/26/2011
Title: Red Wolf
Author: Liza Marklund
Publisher: Atria
Pages: 386
Rating: ***
Review Source: the local library
Back of Book Synopsis:
  Beneath a dark winter sky . . . death waits patiently.
A journalist is murdered in the frozen white landscape of a northern Swedish town. Annika Bengtzon, a reporter at a Stockholm-based tabloid, was planning to interview him about a long-ago attack against an isolated air base nearby, and now she suspects that his death is linked to that attack.
Against the explicit orders of her boss, she begins to investigate the event, which is soon followed by a series of shocking murders. Annika knows the murders are connected. At the same time, she begins to suspect that her husband is hiding something, and nothing can counteract the loneliness that has crept into her life.
Behind everything lurks the figure of the Red Wolf, a cold-blooded killer with the soul of a lover. In the end, she must discover the truth not only about the murders but also about the lies that are destroying her own family.

My thoughts:

I have to admit that it was the book cover that caught my attention when I was at the Library. I have never read any of Liza Marklund's other novels but I would now after reading Red Wolf. I probably should have started at the beginning of the Annika Bengtzon series but I did not realize it was a series until I started noticing references to past events but I don't think that the fact that I did not read any of the others hinder my reading of Red Wolf.  Liza Marklund writes very descriptively so that I could get a good picture in my head of the places and people she wrote about despite the fact that I have never been to Sweden so I could not picture anything about it besides its place on a map before I read the book. I did notice that I kept thinking that the characters were British because of the way they spoke so I was wondering if it was translated into English or if Liza Marklund wrote it in English (Actually the British English makes sense more than American English since they are in closer proximity than America and Sweden so that would be the English spoken.)

I also couldn't help comparing Red Wolf to the Millennium Trilogy. I thought Red Wolf  was just as addictive as Stieg Larsson's novels but it was more fast paced and easier to get into. Over all I really enjoyed it, the only negative thing about it was that it took me a while to get into it but once I did get into it I couldn't put it down. I would recommend it to anyone who loves crime books and more specifically, to those who enjoyed the Millennium Trilogy.
I'd give it ***.