Indrek Hargla

Set in fifteenth-century Tallinn, this murder mystery sees the town apothecary Melchior Wakenstede turn sleuth as he tries to solve the brutal murder of a visiting Teutonic Knight. Indrek Hargla writes with clear knowledge of Tallinn's history and legends and an affection for the city, and this in many ways this is quite a readable yarn. But as a novel, Apothecary Melchior is marred by a shockingly sloppy translation into English, a whydunnit that didn't really convince me, and one truly bizarre interlude that made me deeply dubious about Hargla's attitude towards women. We're told that the Wakenstede men suffer from some kind of "curse" that manifests itself as... some kind of depressive migraine, judging by the symptoms? A curse which is why they're insistent on always making a good choice of wife, because it seems the one thing that provides respite is oral sex, as we find out in a very explicit scene which is tonally completely inconsistent with the rest of the book.

I wouldn't point blank refuse to ever read another book in this series, but I'm not going to rush to seek out another one, either.… (mer)