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Book Review of The Man from Beijing

The Man from Beijing
Leigh avatar reviewed on + 378 more book reviews


*contains spoiler*

I went into this expecting an entertaining story along the same lines of Stieg Larsson. This is not that book. The novel opens with horrific descriptions of a mass murder in a small Swedish town (beheadings, missing limbs, animals slaughtered, etc.). Nineteen people, total, were slaughtered, eighteen of them elderly. As you can see, it starts off interesting.

Enter the amateur sleuth, who happens to possess relevant information. After much political talk and journeys to Mozambique, China, and London, we realize this massacre spans over a hundred years and is racist in origin. If everyone sought to avenge everyone else over a wrong in their lives, we'd have no one left on earth. The political message at the end was pretty inspiring: work to make the world a better place for people, move forward, progress. Three and a half stars.