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The Dogs of Riga  By  cover art

The Dogs of Riga

By: Henning Mankell, Laurie Thompson - translator
Narrated by: Dick Hill
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Publisher's summary

On the Swedish coastline, the bodies of two victims of grisly torture and cold execution are discovered in a life raft. With no witnesses, no motives, and no crime scene, Detective Kurt Wallander is frustrated and uncertain that he has the ability to solve a case as mysterious as it is heinous. After the victims are traced to the Baltic state of Latvia, a country gripped by the upheaval of Soviet disintegration, Major Liepa of the Riga police takes over the investigation.

Thinking his work is done, Wallander slips back into his routine, until he is suddenly called to Riga and plunged into an alien world - in which shadows are everywhere, everything is watched, and old regimes will do anything to stay alive.

©1992 Henning Mankell; 2001 Laurie Thompson (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"The writing is spare, the characterization deft, the atmosphere strong, and the suspense overwhelming." (Times Literary Supplement)
"Apart from his uncommon skill at devising dense, multilayered plots, Mankell's forte is matching mood to setting and subject." (New York Times Book Review)
"Wallander's introspection and self-doubt make him compellingly real, and his efforts to find out what happened to those men on the life raft makes for riveting reading." (Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about The Dogs of Riga

Average customer ratings
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

My first Mankell book

My interest was piqued when I read on the audible just released lists about Swedish author Henning Mankell. I read the publisher's summary and thought they looked interesting. I'd never read a Swedish author before, that I know of anyway, and thought why not give it a try. I've always found the Baltic history intriguing so decided to give Dogs of Riga a try as my first one. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and getting to know Kurt Wallander. It was a fun listen with with plenty of plot twists and turns. Henning writes a good story. I enjoyed hearing the descriptions of life in both Sweden and Latvia. You wonder sometimes what the citizens of both countries think about life there and it appears to have its challenges. I will look forward to listening to the other Mankell books on Audible.

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26 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

I learned a lot about Latvia and Sweden

Any additional comments?

I greatly enjoyed The Dogs of Riga. Having given Dick Hill a negative review for his reading of the first book in the Wallander series, I was pleased that he had settled into a more appropriate style than in Faceless Killers. The story is intriguing with a fast pace and an unusually well handled sense of place. Highly recommended for fans of top-quality mysteries.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

The Best of the Wallander Books I Listened to.

This is my second of the first three in the Henning Mankell / Kurt Wallander series. This one is actually the best of the first three by a decent margin.

I went ahead and purchased one of Audible's package deals which included the first three books in this series all at once.

As I said with my first review of "Faceless Killers", while this is definitely an improvement, it's still nothing great. Likewise, the narrator, Dick Hill was good, but he is so "white-bread", he's not the perfect fit here.

Granted, overall, this one is not bad, three Mankell / Wallander books is enough for me.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Creeped out in Latvia

What made the experience of listening to The Dogs of Riga the most enjoyable?

As a dedicated Kurt Walllender fan, I felt I knew what to expect in this book, just another in the excellent series. Wallender introspective, police procedure grindingly glacially, Sweden bleak and foggy. I was not expecting Latvia. Wallender is out of his never-very- comfortable comfort zone and spends much of the story in horror at getting himself embroiled in an illicit trip behind the iron curtain. Unlike some of the other, more procedural books, in this one he finds a depth of his own bravery and capacity for heroism that astounds him, and us.By the way, the trip to Latvia is off!! At least the treacherous cold war era Latvia Wallender navigates in The Dogs of Riga!!

What other book might you compare The Dogs of Riga to and why?

Any book in this series is an excellent listen. Narrator Dick Hill adds a dimension to the character of the Swedes who people the books without endless annoying overacting and bogus accents. His reading of Wallender captures the world weariness and indecision of this very human character.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Another book ruined by the reader!

I can't wait to read Mankell's books. I would have liked to listen to them but Dick Hill's reading is awful. I'm sure the books are infinitely richer that what they seem.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Complex and intriguing

The narration was quite well done except for a couple of squeeky women and the story kept me interested.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Wallander is the Nordic Sam Spade

Imperfect, self deprecating, yet true to his principles and on an investigation on foreign soil. A wonderful who-done-it.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A great Cold War story

Mankell's painstaking research gives us a look into how the latter days of the Cold War affected people in the Baltic region. Through the eyes of Inspector Wallander, chasing international drug smugglers and murderers, we get a taste of how the Swedes were affected, too. An absorbing story that lags a little here and there and meanders into North European politics, but a rewarding read nonetheless. Dick Hill is, as ever, a great hand at narration.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Atmospheric novel. Recreates tension in Soviet satellite states in 1990's

Gripping novel featuring Swedish detective Wallender. Shame the narrator made the male voices so creepy.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Thought provoking foreign detective story

I used a credit for this book for reason of the other reviews written about it. It does have an excellent plot which moves well, although definitely not "fast." This book is not a "cliff hanger" nor a "page turner" but does an excellent job of providing the listener of a birds' eye view of police establishments in other countries. There seem to be more similarities than differences between our American culture and that of Sweden and Lithuania. The story opens with good action and the author proceeds well through the novel to the action which happens at the end. Well thought out plot that moves well. My personal preference is for more "action" and more "cliff hanger" events; however, I rated the story relatively highly for the reason the author has written a quality novel and the reader does an excellent job in the narration. On a personal note, I had some difficulty keeping the characters straight for reason of their strange sounding names; however, the listener does become acclimated to the foreign names. All in all there is good value for a book credit.

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2 people found this helpful