The Dogs of Riga is the second book in the Wallander series by Swedish author Henning Mankell.    There are 10 books in the series, published from 1991 to 2014.    I have read 5 of them and over time, I hope to read them all.    Since Kurt Wallander is a deeply flawed character and the Nordic noir stories are dark and sometimes harsh, I find that I need to space out the stories.    The same applies to other Nordic writers like Jo Nesbo, Camilla Lackburg, Stieg Larsson, Asa Larsson, and Yrsa Sigurdardottir.

In this novel, two bodies are found in a raft and Wallender follows a few scant clues to identify the murdered men.    They turn out to be Latvian and a police officer comes across the Baltic to Sweden to assist with the investigation.    Upon return, the Latvian officer is murdered.    Wallender finds himself in Riga and he soon understands that he is caught between corrupt policemen and an undercover group trying to expose a conspiracy between a criminal network, the police, and politicians.    He is sent back to Sweden, but he later returns to Riga under a false passport and works on solving the murders and uncovering the conspiracy.

The events are positioned at a time when Latvia was starting to gain its independence and freedom from the Soviet Union.    The best part of the book is Wallender’s immersion into the grim realities of Riga.     The plot, though, is a little contrived with some unlikely events, some shaky motives, and some “flat characters.”   Overall, this was not as strong a tale as his other books.   3.8 stars/5.