What are you reading the week of September 21, 2014?

[scarletwoman]

12. Well, damn and blast, I finished Håkan Nesser's "The G File" on Friday night.

I was trying to drag it out by taking big pauses in reading it and doing other stuff - and it's 600 pages long, after all - but as I got closer to the end, I just couldn't put it down.

I've enjoyed Nesser's Inspector Van Veeteren series, and it was way cool to have the mystery of the "G File" cleared up at last. And as I wrote in last week's thread when I posted about how excited I was that this book had finally come in, I'm quite fond of Van Veeteren, as fictional characters go. And the "G File" has been referenced numerous times throughout the earlier books of the series.

The book is in two parts - the first part takes place in 1987, when the events that led to original G file occurred - it was the only case that Van Veeteren had never solved in his 30 year career. The second part takes place in 2002, when new events have been set in motion which eventually lead to solving the old case.

The solution to the old case was a nicely crafted surprise - to me, at least. When I went to read the reader reviews on GoodReads (which I often do, but only after I've finished a book), several reviewers claimed to have figured it out long before the actual reveal. So, maybe I'm dense, because it never seemed obvious to me, dammit!

Anyway, for the most part I enjoyed the book - I found that last half of the 1987 part rather dragged a bit, but I kept faithfully plugging away so I could get to the payoff. And once I made it through the draggy stuff, the 2002 part pretty much sped right along.

I would definitely recommend it for readers who have already read and enjoyed the rest of the series. I would not recommend it for anyone for hasn't read the earlier books - there are just too many references and characters in The G File which would mean absolutely nothing to someone who hasn't read the whole series. And a large part of the enjoyment of this book involves the re-introduction of several characters from book 2 of series (Borkmann's Point), as well as the knowledge of how thoroughly this one heretofore unsolved case has haunted Van Veeteren all through the earlier books.

And now I'm left with nothing to read, again.