THE DEPARTMENT OF SENSITIVE CRIMES: A Detective Varg novel Paperback – 5 March 2020

After gorging on McCall Smith’s books, I have reached the stage where the sweetness and light tire me a bit. McCall Smith will surely come up some little surprises as the characters develop in later books of the series, but I doubt whether they will do something totally unexpected.And yet their humour will induce a chuckle. Like when the mighty commissioner of police here concludes gravely, “Cats are psychopaths at heart” after describing his wife’s “antisocial cat” who “takes a swipe at you from under a chair as you walk past.”

A light read with quirky characters who adorn the plots with their discerning eyes and enthralling peculiarities. The range of cases in the book is quaint and unusually attractive. The book is a beau ideal of a novel in harmony with its philosophical reflections and it performs the two fold function of teaching some new things as well as entertaining the readers quite successfully. The stories are engrossing if not thrilling. The distinct personalities of characters are carved so well that it created an alternate reality inside my head where all of the events actually transpired. One of the appealing aspects of the book is that the stories it entails are quite in touch with reality and, yet, they are perky unlike the dull realities we embrace in our mundane lives. The cases aren't nail biting but they did not fail to intrigue me. I give this Scandinavian crime fiction 3.5 stars out of 5 for its realistic depiction of adorable characters and it's unique set of compelling cases.

Good

I am a fan of Alexander Mc Call Smith, but this novel was a bit slow and i still have not finished it.

Beautifully written, funny, kind and sweet.

Quite disappointed with this novel. All of the cases seem unbelievable and trivial. The detection does not involve any logic or clues or validation. In one case they find that the person is not missing because the colleague of the detective saw him in the gym; in another the man is a were wolf supposedly, which is not scientifically proven but assumed and the case is closed. This should be called the department of insane ,unbelievable crimes.

Although well written the book is too overcomplicated in its dialogue for my liking but interesting in its consept

McCall-Smith has transplanted a world view from Botswana to Sweden, from Precious Ramotswe to Varg and he seems to have borrowed a few ideas from Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit to shape Detective Varg's Department of Sensitive Crimes. But Varg's group occupies a gentler world than Bryant and May. McCall-Smith's writing has a charming way of making the ordinary person's foibles and simple philosophy interesting, relatable and sometimes poignant. Stabbing a person in the back of the knee notwithstanding, sympathy for the perpetrator over shadows the seriousness of his crime. And for a little while one is immersed in a kinder, gentler world that offers a respite from the difficulties that life can offer.

This book was so hard to put down. And when it ended, I felt like I couldn’t wait for the next installment. The characters are so charming and interesting and you just want to keep in touch with them, as if they were really good friends, not just of each other, of but of the reader. It amazes me how the author manages to devise dialogue that is so unusual and yet seems so true to life. His characters have so much character!

Le département des crimes particuliers et cas délicats est géré par ULf Varg. Il arrive toujours grace à son instinct à trouver le coupable. Mais ce n'est pas l'objet du livre; ce sont les relations entre suédois et leur place dans la société dite paradisiaque suédoise .

... but I was a little bit angry when I found out, that this book is totally lacking... crimes!OK - Swedish Detectives use to have some problems, but Ulf Varg is a case of his own. In love with his married colleague Anna, he is also the proud owner of a deaf dog, Martin. Who is trained to lip-read. But in the last weeks the doggie is depressed! There are some other individuals with problems of their own, but the whole book is going nowhere. Every case that Ulf & Company seem to be investigating turns out to be a non-case. No real solutions are given to the disillusioned reader - imagine what YOU like, the author seems to say.Martin the dog was the most fascinating personality of all - and a werewolf who never really came out of its closet. To small a bounty for the searchers of horrors and/or thrills.So sorry, but a second "thriller" of this kind does not attract me.2** stars, one for doggie Martin and the other for the hidden werewolf. End of my personal interest into "Sensitive Crimes". Which are SO sensitive to be simply nonexistent.