February, 1991. A life raft washes ashore in Skåne carrying two dead men in expensive suits, shot gangland-style. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team determine that the men were Eastern European criminals. But what appears in Sweden to be an open-and-shut case soon plunges Wallander into an alien world of police surveillance, thinly veiled threats, and life-endangering lies.

When another murder is committed, Wallander must travel to Riga, Latvia, at the peak of the massive social and political upheaval that preceded the nation’s independence from the Soviet Union. A country in transition, Latvia is a place where deception and corruption are everyday practice. Wallander struggles to catch up with the culprits in this shadowy nation and must make a dangerous choice about who is lying and who is telling the truth. Aligned with political dissidents, he has to work outside the law for the first time and figure out who in this police state he can possibly trust when his and others’ lives are at risk. It is the greatest test of his bravery he has yet had to face.

The Dogs of Riga is the second book in the critically acclaimed and internationally bestselling Kurt Wallander series.