Mike Parka

Farmers are often portrayed as the villains in the media I consume. Whether through harmful, intensive farming practices damaging the environment or limiting access to the few open spaces that we have around us. I get a very one sided view of the situation.

With the ongoing controversy around the inheritance tax, I was finding it difficult to sympathise with the farming community. I decided to educate myself and try to see a different perspective on farming. This book proved a wonderful choice.

This is a very honest and personal story of a family farm in the Lake District. It raised some difficult questions and suggested some potential solutions. But most importantly it made me care more about farmers and their struggles. Things in life are rarely black and white and I understand now that my view was overly simplistic. I'll try to remember this story and have more empathy in the future.

Delightfully strange. Abrupt ending leaves you wondering and maybe a bit unsatisfied. But still, the atmosphere and general weirdness of this book was enough for me to really enjoy it. Wasn't bored for a second.

Kurt Wallander stories were never optimistic in any way, but this one is especially dark. The crimes in this book are not as horrifying as they were in some of the previous books, but the state of mind/health of our favourite detective is the real horror of this novel. As much as I like this series I'll be the first to admin that sometimes the investigations drag on for ages without anything remotely interesting happening. It's not like this book is boring, because it's not, it just suffers from some pacing issues in my opinion. It's too slow in few parts and some parts could have been omitted all together. The pace picks up in the last 100 pages and it's a shame the rest of the book is not as good as the ending. Nevertheless, if you are a fan of Wallander you just have to read this one. Kurts internal struggle with his doubts and his health is the strongest point of this book and will make you want to pick up the next chapter in the series.

Overall I quite liked this book. I didn't mind the short story format at all and it was interesting to see Wallander at different stages of his career.

The actual cases covered in this book were... okay. I wouldn't say they were particularly memorable. The investigations felt a bit slow and the big breakthroughs were mostly lucky accidents. Is it more realistic this way? Perhaps. But it doesn't make an exciting read I'm afraid.

It's the characters that are interesting and if you enjoyed the previous books, you will know exactly what to expect here as well.

I really enjoyed this one. Some Discworld books move at such a fast pace that it's difficult to follow what is going on sometimes. This one was more focused and really entertaining. It got some audible chuckles from me - which is a difficult thing to accomplish! Just a pick-me-up that I needed in this long, dreary January.