The Dogs of Riga

A few days later what they have been warned of comes to pass: a life raft is washed up on a beach. In it are two men, dressed in expensive suits, shot dead. The dead men were Eastern European criminals, victims of what seems to have been a gangland hit. But what appears in Sweden to be an open-and-shut case soon takes on a far more sinister aspect. Wallander travels across the Baltic Sea to Riga in Latvia, a nation experiencing the massive social and political upheaval that will lead to its independence from the Soviet Union. There Wallander is plunged into a frozen, alien world of police surveillance, scarcely veiled threats, and lies. Doomed always to be one step behind the shadowy figures he pursues, he comes to understand what it is to live in a nation in which democracy is still only a dream. Only his dogged, almost subconscious desire to se that justice is done brings the truth to light.