Like so many people, I enjoy The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series very much. However, I have never really got on with Alexander McCall Smith’s other work and this remains largely true of this start of a new series.

The Department of Sensitive Crimes is set in an odd little department of the police in Malmo, Sweden. The location is significant: it is the setting for both Wallander and The Bridge and McCall Smith is trying to create a contrast to these classics of Scandi-Noir. Ulf Varg (translation: Wolf Wolf) and his colleagues are a gentle investigative team who look into not-terribly-serious crimes and resolve them by talking to people, noticing details, reflecting on human nature (or a version of human nature, at least) and generally being honest and kind. Remind you of anything?

Yes, The Department of Sensitive Crimes has pretty much the structure of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, but set in Sweden. The trouble is that while Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi, Mr J.L.B Matekoni and others have real originality, charm and a genuine spark about them, Ulf and his colleagues don’t really. For me they weren’t terribly interesting people and their digressive musings just became rather dull rather than charming.

It does have its moments; a statement in court by a convicted man is genuinely touching, for example, and wry sentences like “But the procedure for procedures had to be gone through, in accordance with further procedural guidelines,” kept me going. It’s readable and I did finish it (with a little skimming of yet another digression every so often) but I won’t be rushing to read the next in the series.

(My thanks to Little Brown for an ARC via NetGalley.)

I like the way Alexander McCall Smith writes about the little things that make the life of his characters grounded in a world that exists away from reality and yet feels very real. I loved the Number One Detective Agency series and I love that he had chosen a place just as exotic for the investigation of a detective Ulf Varg - Department of Sensitive Crimes in Malmo. The observation of human nature and the subtle underlining of the difference between right and wrong makes this the beginning of another great adventure.

Scandinavian crime, à la Alexander McCall Smith, is - as you might expect - an altogether much nicer, gentler affair than the Scandi noir of recent times.

Ulf Varg - both his names mean “wolf” - possibly the kindest man in the Swedish police force, works in the eponymous Department of Sensitive Crimes, where anything a bit odd seems to end up. Ulf loves Nordic art and his dog, Martin, who he has taught to lip read . He’s also rather too fond of his colleague Anna, though that is unfortunately fraught with complication...

There are of course no gruesome murders to be investigated; the most violent thing that happens here is a market trader being stabbed in the back of the knee. There’s also the mysterious disappearance of a young woman’s imaginary boyfriend, and some mysterious, even wolfish, goings-on at a spa. Plenty for the thoughtful, reflective Ulf and his colleagues - Anna, the conscientious Carl, fishing-obsessed clerical assistant Erik and annoyingly loquacious Blomquist - to be getting on with. As is usual for this author, none of the mysteries or solutions are especially mind-blowing, but that’s not really the point.

Fans of Alexander McCall Smith (I would count myself as one, although I haven’t read everything he’s written... there’s a lot of it) will delight in the gently meandering style and philosophical musings. The Department of Sensitive Crimes is the first in a series featuring Ulf Varg - I look forward to future instalments.

Intriguing little tale. Quite took me by surprise when it finished all of a sudden! Guess it's a short story? Or Novella?
Anyway, pretty engaging tale - liked the constant side-tracks we were taken down. Much like some of my own conversations with my friends. If it was an 'introduction' it certainly worked... I'd be very interested in some more adventures of Mr Varg.
I'm not (surprisingly) very familiar with Mr McCall-Smith's work (my wife is a big fan) but found this a darned decent read. Easy going, smart and intricately worked. Good stuff. More please.

Clever, entertaining, funny and philosophical without ever being boring. A look at the individual's relationship with truth and fact; every Police Force should have a Department of Sensitive Crimes.

I find reading Alexander McCall Smith incredibly soothing. I love the gentle, philosophical nature of the books he writes, the small details, the humour, the wry observations. His crime books never really have crimes in them. They're more an examination of the quirks of human nature. That's not to say that they don't deal with sadness or cruelty, but everything is always on a human scale. Here, Ulf Varg, a detective in the Department of Sensitive Crimes in Malmo, drifts thoughtfully through a series of strange happenings in which people lose their way and find it again and nothing too terrible happens, and all of that is excellently satisfying.

Lovely observational, slightly whimsical writing by Alexander McCall Smith, which was why his Number One Ladies Detective Agency was so good.
Although the characters were professionals in the police force there was a slightly farcical edge to their behaviour, the perpetrator of the knife crime was also a victim and he brought out the human side of the officers , although they seemed too tolerant of the young women who wasted their time investigating their petty squabbles. Set in Scandinavia this novel is not of the Scandi Noir genre but a good read overall..

I would like to thank Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for an advance copy of The Department of Sensitive Crimes, the first novel to feature Detective Ulf Varg of the Malmö police.

Ulf, along with his colleagues, Anna and Carl and assisted by Erik in the office and Officer Blomqvist on the beat are called to solve several unrelated crimes over the course of the novel, a stabbing, an alleged murder and strange goings on at a rural health spa.

The Department of Sensitive Crimes is an unusual, clever novel and, despite my reading of several novels in The Number One Ladies Detective Agency series, a bit outside my comfort zone, to the extent that I’m not sure if I enjoyed it or not. It consists of Ulf solving three distinct “crimes” and covers his interpersonal relationships and thoughts as much as his crime solving.

It is an amusing novel in parts, especially situationally as the crimes are inventive but ridiculous, but certain bits seem laboured, like Erik’s only topic of conversation being fishing, and pall rapidly. It is an interesting conceit to situate a lightweight, frivolous novel in Sweden which is more often home to dark, intense crime fiction. I’m not sure it really works as, apart from a few musings on Swedishness, there isn’t a great sense of place. There is no doubt, however, that the author is gently poking fun at the genre because his characters are extremely nondescript, in fact, let’s not beat about the bush, boring (Ulf’s hobby is reading magazines about Scandinavian art) and nice, worried about being PC and doing the right thing.

I don’t think I really got the book so it didn’t amuse me as much as it probably will other readers.