I got involved in writing something that ended up taking several hours, and didn't make it over here to the Fiction Group until just now. I'm so glad you took care of getting the weekly thread posted!
I had a very busy week IRL, so I barely had time to read. I finished my second Kerstin Ekman book, Under the Snow on Saturday morning. While it was shorter, and not as difficult to read as Blackwater, it was still very strange. I had two other books by Ekman on loan from the library, but they were due back on Friday and not renewable, so I returned them unread. I'm uncertain what I think of Ms. Ekman - she writes beautifully, and does atmospherics extraordinarly well - but both books left me flailing and lost a great deal of the time. I think part of my problem with them is that I had to read them in such disjointed dribs and drabs of spare time. I suspect they are better suited to long, uninterrupted reading sessions, instead of desperately trying to remember who is who from one day of reading to the next.
I also finished The Ravens by Norwegian author Vidar Sundstøl, the third and final book of his Minnesota Trilogy. It was a mostly satisfactory finale - although I suspect I am more enamored of the story behind the writing of this trilogy than I am with the trilogy itself. In any case, the identity of the actual murderer came as a complete surprise (but logically consistent), so I have to give him that.
I'm about to start on Colin Cotterill's Six and a half Deadly Sins, #10 of his Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery series, set in 1970s Laos. This is an absolutely delightful series - I started with #7 in 2011, which charmed me no end, so I read all the books leading up to it, and have read every subsequent entry as it's been published. 2 years have elapsed since #9 came out, so it's been rather a bit of wait for #10, which was just published this May.
I can highly recommend this series for mystery readers - they are witty, intelligent, and subtly political. If you have any interest in the state of Indochina in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, these are absolutely marvelous reads. And even if you're not interested in the geopolitics of that part of the world, I think you can not help but fall in love with the character of Dr. Siri, the intricate plotting, and the fully realized sense of place.
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