THE MAN FROM BEIJING by Henning Mankell

I read this book December 27th, 2015 to January 2, 2016.

In the Swedish hamlet of Hesjövallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene.

Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: Her grandparents, the Andréns, are among the victims, and Birgitta soon learns that an Andrén family in Nevada has also been murdered. She then discovers the nineteenth-century diary of an Andrén ancestor—a gang master on the American transcontinental railway—that describes brutal treatment of Chinese slave workers. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the Hesjövallen murders, but Birgitta is determined to uncover what she now suspects is a more complicated truth.

I liked it a lot in the beginning (the opening of the book is terrific, with well-practiced, creepy and engrossing scando-noir) and began to dislike it more and more as I got further along. Sadly I was disappointed in this book being the first novel I've read by this author.