This is the second book in the Erik Winter series by Ake Edwardson published in English. The summer is unusually warm in Gothenburg. People are out in the long summer evenings, 
Chief Inspector Erik Winter, a young but very talented and intelligent investigator, is in charge of the case. There are some similarities between the crimes. Winter also has a feeling the two cases may somehow be connected to an earlier, still unresolved, case of rape in the same park many years earlier.
This is a beautifully written, compelling book. Never End begins slowly. The reader struggles to make a coherent story from the details gathered by the detectives, who are also trying to make sense of confusing clues. But as the story continues the pace picks up. Ake Edwardson is an exciting, skillful writer.
Ake Edwardson, in a fashion similar to other Swedish crime novelists like for instance Henning Mankell, chronicles a methodical homicide investigation extremely well. He is very good at making visible the psychological aspects of the suspects, the victims and the police officers working on the case.
When a third woman is killed, Winter and his team find a possible link between the victims. This takes them on a journey deep into the city’s nightlife. And Winter suddenly finds that the case is endangering both himself and his family as well.
The prose in Never End is sparse but finely detailed. It is an excellent police procedural with good, deep characterizations. Erik Winter is a very interesting character, a Scandinavian detective who is a snob rather than a slob. And the book is very suspenseful with a fabulous ending.
“Edwardson’s series is as much about character interaction as it is about story, but he is no slouch at building suspense, and his ability to make the sweltering heat a kind of secondary character – as in Hitchcock’s Rear Window–only adds to the tension.”
—Booklist“This series is a tough, smart police procedural. . . . Edwardson is a masterful storyteller. . . . This is crime writing at its most exciting, with great atmosphere and superb characters.”
—The Globe & Mail, Toronto“A novel with the most exhilarating final 50 pages in recent crime fiction.”
—Toronto Star –This text refers to the Paperback edition.
. Links to Amazon UK: Sun and Shadow: An Erik Winter Novel
, Never End
, or Frozen Tracks
