
Book review — Tadej Golob: Jezero (The Lake)
It doesn’t happen every day that one chooses Slovenian criminal novel and reads it. Why? There aren’t that many and the most important cause, they aren’t advertised. Since I really like the crime genre, I am also reading books written by Slovenian authors. This summer a lot of friends were talking about that Slovenian criminal novel and the book was displayed at all important bookstores in Ljubljana, so I’ve decided to buy a paperback version of the book. I’ve needed 4 days to finish it and now I am going to write about my feeling and my opinion about the story I have just read.

The story is set in the near past in 2016, so the reader can easily relate to that time and can think about the actual events of that time. Many known names, songs and places are mentioned. Figures talk about the refugee crises in Europe at that time and there are many hints, which could lead you to actual well-known persons.
The inspector in that story is Taras Birsa, a middle-aged married man, who has two grown daughters studying in Austria. His wife is a paediatrician and owns a clinic. The story starts when a walker discovers a body of a woman in a freezing Bohinj lake in northwest Slovenia. The main problem of that case is that the body is headless and so the police cannot identify the identity of the female victim. There are more murders to happen and the inspector tries to discover the possible link to the past of some woman who has committed suicide more than 20 years ago. Are the murders even connected to each other? The dean of one faculty is murdered and the police is successful finding out who he was, but what about the others.
The inspector is not really talkative, but not in a funny way like Hercule Poirot or some other famous detective. He tries to avoid the sexual relationship with a young colleague, but they end up together when staying at a hotel near the murder scene. The wife never finds out.
Since the novel is pretty long, I expected that the solution to the murder case will be spectacular, but I wasn’t pleased with the solution presented by the author. It is just so flat and I regret reading a book for such a long time and then finding out that miserable result. Well, I guess I’ve expected well to much! I hope his next crime novel will be better!
