Dogs from Riga

The novel Dogs of Riga (Swedish: Hundarna i Riga ) by the Swedish writer Henning Mankell , first published in 1992 , is the second part of the series about the fictional Swedish policeman Kurt Wallander after Murderer Without a Face .

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On a cold day in February 1991 at Skåne Baltic Sea beach a lifeboat found lying in the two shot dead men. Because it in the police district Ystad was driven ashore, Kurt Wallander is entrusted with the investigation.

The two dead can soon be identified as Latvians . The police are therefore asking the Latvian authorities to cooperate. Shortly afterwards, Major Karlis Liepa came to Ystad as a representative of the Riga police. As a result of the joint investigation by Wallander and Liepa, the case is finally transferred to the Latvian police on account of responsibility, which means that the case appears to be closed for Wallander. The inconspicuous, cautious Karlis Liepa, with whom Wallander became friends during the short period of collaboration, travels back to the Latvian capital Riga after the lifeboat was stolen from the police headquarters.

Soon after Liepa's departure, Commissioner Wallander was informed that the Latvian police officer had been murdered on the day he returned. Wallander is then invited to the Latvian capital to participate in the further investigation. In Riga, however, he finds himself exposed to an almost impenetrable game of confusion, the main actors of which seem to be Liepa's two superiors, the police Colonels Murniers and Putnis. Bit by bit it becomes clear to Wallander that he got caught up in a large-scale conspiracy - and that Liepa had to die because the public disclosure of his investigations would have revealed too much about that strange web of restorative Soviet policy, the Russian mafia and the corrupt police.

During his stay in Riga, Wallander is contacted by Baiba, Liepa's widow, and falls in love with her. Through Baiba he also came into contact with the dissident Latvian underground movement. The two questionable colonels can unexpectedly quickly present a perpetrator to Wallander, which is why Wallander is returning to Sweden - the matter now seems to be finally settled for him.

Due to a cry for help from the Latvian dissidents , Wallander got involved in a dangerous game only a short time later: while he was pretending to his employer that he was going on a skiing holiday in the Alps, he was actually traveling again - this time very adventurously overland via Poland to Latvia. After secretly crossing the border, he meets the dissidents in a warehouse, but he witnesses a massacre by the police, which he is the only one to survive. With a stolen car he goes to Riga to find out what is actually behind the mysterious death of Karlis Liepa and the discovery of the two lifeboat corpses - and to meet Baiba Liepa again. An almost confusing game begins against dark and almost intangible persecutors, in which Wallander relies on the cooperation of Baiba and other Latvians. Under a pretext and with the support of a policeman with integrity, he finally succeeds in breaking into the archives of the Riga police headquarters, where he actually finds the files with the results of the investigation that Major Liepa had hidden before his death. Wallander only barely manages to escape, but shortly afterwards he and Baiba Liepa are arrested by Colonel Putnis and his men in a department store.

Putnis succeeds in convincing Wallander that it is not he, but his comrade Murniers who is the mastermind behind the obscure events. Wallander then hands him the token for the folder with the results of the investigation, which he previously hidden at the department store's storage area. Thereupon Putnis reveals himself as the true ringleader and turns his weapon on Wallander and his companion. At the last second, Colonel Murniers appears with a crowd of police officers. In the subsequent firefight, they kill Putnis and his accomplices, where Baiba Liepa Wallander saves the life by shooting a sergeant who is pointing the gun at him with Putnis's pistol. It later turns out that it was the shot sergeant who killed Karlis Liepa.

Murniers, for his part, now exposes Putnis as a die-hard advocate of the still-active Soviet order and therefore a stringent opponent of the Latvian independence movement. In order to disavow this, Putnis tried to pass drugs on to some Latvians in exile living in Sweden who were close to the independence movement. The two dead found in the lifeboat had been shot because they protested. Major Liepa had to have Putnis eliminated because the latter had discovered his sinister machinations.

background

The novel is set against the background of the changes that are emerging in the Baltic Soviet republics in the early 1990s. Latvia had already declared its independence in May 1990, but was not actually released from Soviet rule until September 1991. The action takes place in this interregnum . Colonel Putnis stands for those forces who try to preserve the Soviet socialist system in Latvia with the most rigid means. Baiba and her colleagues, on the other hand, represent the awakening, sovereign and democratically led Latvia.

Quote

"There are no murderers, there are only people who commit murders."

filming

In 1995 the novel was filmed in Sweden as a TV crime thriller , the main role took over for the second time after Murderer without a face actor Rolf Lassgård , directed again Pelle Berglund. The German version was dubbed by ZDF in 2004 and broadcast as a 100-minute feature film in January 2005 . A remake was made in 2012, directed by Esther Campbell, with Kenneth Branagh in the lead role.

literature

• Jeanette Schröter: Religion in the Swedish detective novel. The Swedish thrillers by Larsson, Mankell and Nesser. Marburg: Tectum-Verlag 2015 (Diss. Hannover), pp. 84–86. ISBN 978-3-8288-3528-3

Web links

• www.wallander-web.de (Kommissar-Wallander-Fan-Homepage) with a summary, reference to films, radio play adaptations etc.
• Dogs from Riga on www.krimi-couch.de
• Blurb and review notes on www.perlentaucher.de