Älexander McCall Smith. The Talented Mr. Varg. Pantheon, 2020.

This installment of tales about the Department of Sensitive Crimes of the Malmö, Sweden, city police ironically and consciously tips its hat in echoing the title of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Mr. Varg is no Ripley. He is a pleasant but passive, phlegmatic character who is suited to the unusual department that he runs.

The cleverness and humor are not as strong as the first novel, but The Talented Mr. Varg still makes for some enjoyable light reading. We note that on the cover and title page, Smith puts a dieresis over the A in his first name to make it look Scandinavian.

One recurring image satirizes the multiparty system in Sweden and other parliamentary governments. Mr. Varg has a brother who is a leader in the Moderate Extremist Party. The right-wing Moderate Extremists are not to be confused with the left-wing Extreme Moderates. Even those names suggest something about the way we view ideological “wings.” Though there is a two-party system in the United States, we wonder from time to time if the Socialists will split from the Democrats or if the Populists will split from the Republicans.

Here the sensitive crimes that Varg investigates (and we use the term investigate lightly) are two that one might have to be careful about. Long-time girlfriend of novelist Nils Personn-Cederström fears her lover is being blackmailed. A newspaper is publicizing some shocking revelations about Cederström in an upcoming series. She witnessed a large amount of money changing hands between Cederström and a journalist.

Ordinarily, blackmail would be handled by the regular police department, but the apparent blackmail turns usual blackmail on its head. Cederström is known as the Swedish Hemingway. He writes about big game hunting, bullfighting, hard drinking, and various macho enterprises, but it looks like he is really more like Clark Kent than Superman. He writes well, but he is a vegetarian who does not like to drink much. He may be being blackmailed because someone wants to reveal him as a fraud. He’s not the fast-liver the public thinks he is.

Around the same time, his co-worker Anna has good reason to believe her anesthetist husband is having an affair. She finds an earring in his underwear and notes that her husband is working late a lot. Can Ulf discreetly discover what is going on? It is complicated because Ulf carries a torch for Anna. If there were grounds for divorce, then maybe he would have a chance with her, but he would hate to see her hurt.

Oh, there are a few other loose ends, too. Ulf’s Saab’s front grill is damaged, but he knows the replacement given to him is stolen. What can he do? A policeman receiving stolen goods? And not reporting it? And a breeder of Huskies appears to be selling some of his dogs to a Colombian zoo as wolves. Whether it is an endangered species issue or a problem with fraud, Ulf has another sensitive challenge.

There are then a number of clever ideas here. Varg himself, while observant, also seems quite passive. He does get to the bottom of the problems, but a lot of it seems to be lucky and a matter of circumstances. But some of those circumstances are fun to read about. Just as no one would confuse Cederström with, say, Lawrence of Arabia, no one will confuse Ulf Varg with, say, Sherlock Holmes, or for that matter, maybe even Precious Ramotswe—at least not in this story.