Ake Edwardson joins Stieg Larsson and other crime fiction writers from Sweden who are gaining in popularity at the moment.
Room No 10 is the story of what happens when Chief Inspector Erik Winter was called to Room No 10 in a decrepit Gothenburg hotel where a young woman has apparently hanged herself, he realized that he had been there before. In the first case he worked on as a young police officer, it was from the same room some twenty years previously that a woman had disappeared and was never found.
Winter suspects a connection between the two cases and for much of the novel he worries at the problem, almost compulsively revisiting details of the earlier case. Ake Edwardson has created a slow moving novel and the plot is sometimes confusing as time switches from between the earlier and later cases — particularly where the cast of characters overlaps.
Winter, himself, is the strongest character in Room No.10 and is sympathetic and thoughtful but the plot unfolds slowly and some of the other characters, particularly the female characters, are less well drawn.
There are twists and turns as Winter and his colleagues work to uncover what has taken place. The pace quickens dramatically as Room No 10 draws to a close knitting together most loose ends.
Room No 10 was originally published in Sweden in 2005 and is part of the Inspector Eric Winter series of detective fiction by Åke Edwardson.
Room No. 10 by Åke Edwardson is published by Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9781451608526; eBook 9781451608557. An Advance Reader’s Copy (ARC) was provided via Netgalley for the purpose of this review.