Book review: The Department Of Sensitive Crimes, by Alexander McCall Smith

It is amusing to imagine a reader unfamiliar with Alexander McCall Smith’s work picking up this book and finding it decidedly odd. Billed as a new genre of Scandi-blanc (as opposed to Scandi-noir crime novels), The Department Of Sensitive Crimes introduces us to detective Ulf Varg of the eponymous department of Malmo’s police HQ. Fictional Scandinavian sleuths all have their issues. Harry Hole is a chronic alcoholic, Saga Norén wrestles with Asperger’s and Wallender suffers from memory loss. Varg’s problems include his name, which somewhat embarrassingly translates as “Wolf Wolf”, and his pet, Marten, who is deaf but has been trained as the first Swedish lip-reading dog.