Just a preamble: I write these reviews on the spot, just like how I write the blog posts. It’s just a little more useful for me to track my reading by writing some of these blog posts, for me to have a gauge of what I thought about when I read. It also helps to develop a better view of what I take in as a person, from my choice of reading to my review of the book.
Before The Frost by Henning Mankell is a Linda Wallander book. I’ve read quite a few titles by Mankell, and specifically Kurt Wallander – Linda’s father. Kurt Wallander has a series on Netflix too, known as Young Wallander. As with everything else, the books are better.
This Linda series makes for some alternative thoughts. I don’t really enjoy Linda’s internal monologues and presumptions. Mankell does drive at this a few times, and it comes off a little annoying. It’s actually the only part of the book I don’t enjoy. Throughout this book, there are moments where Linda has dream states, or there are snippets to other moments and flashbacks, and those are totally fine. It’s just Linda’s internal voice I can’t seem to stand.
It runs into more detective thriller type books, and I can really spend all day reading these. It’s just something about reading how a sequence of events unfolds, and whether a perpetrator is caught, or not.
Agatha Christie’s Poirot definitely gets it best. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher too. There are many reasons why those two authors have so much readership, and still continue to draw people in. They’re really well written whodunnits.
I was looking at my library the other day, and Matthew Reily used to have a bigger spot in my reading life. Now with Reacher, the game has stepped up in some ways. Reily’s usual style has maps and contraptions and some science to it. Reacher has just a simple “I hit things, I find things out”. Why does it work so well? Perhaps because it lacks logic, and it just goes for hard hitting action.
Anyway, I am reading other things too, but it’s just easier to speed through whodunnits. I really speed through them but that’s how I like it!
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