The Killer's Art

Title: The Killer’s Art

Author: Mari Jungstedt

Number of pages:

Started: 14 March 2012

Finished: 18 March 2012

Opening words:

Two seconds. That was all it took to destroy him. To tear his life apart. Two pitiful seconds.

The malevolent thoughts that raced back and forth in his head at night refused to let fo. For weeks they’d been keeping him awake. Not until the borderland between night and day did he finally slip into a liberating slumber. He could escape his thoughts for a few hours. Then he woke up again to the hell that had been forced upon him. A lonely, private inferno that raged beneath his controlled exterior. Sharing it with anyone else was impossible.

It was during these two seconds that he had fallen headfirst into the blackest abyss. Never would he have imagined that the truth could, be so merciless.

It took a while before he understood what he had to do. Slowly and irrevocably the realisation had crept in. He would have to set to work on his own. There was no going back, no back door that he could slip through and pretend to the world and himself that nothing had happened.


Plot summary:

A cold Sunday morning, a man is found murdered and hanged in one of the entrances of the old wall that surrounds Visby, the capital of Gotland. The victim is none other than art gallery owner Egon Wallin, who the evening before held a successful opening for a Lithuanian artist. Soon after starting his investigation, Inspector Anders Knutas soon realizes that Egon Wallin was on the verge of leaving Gotland and his wife of 20 years behind – but for what? When the famous painting “The Dying Dandy” by Nils Dardel is stolen in Stockholm, disturbing links to the murder of Egon Wallin are slowly surfacing, taking us right into the exquisite art world and into the homosexual underworld of prostitution and drugs. This is the fourth installment in the Anders Knutas series.

What I thought:

This was the fourth of Mari Jungstedt’s books that I have read, and it continues the Inspector Knutas series. This was a readable book that developed some characters from previous books in the series. Whilst some regard this as one of the better ones in the series, I wasn’t quite so convinced. I felt the plot was based on some fairly seedy stereotypes of male homosexuality and did not do much to show any redeeming characteristics. I wasn’t entirely satisfied by using that as a plot device. It was a decent enough stepping stone to the next book in the series.