final malo ( )

I registered this book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14155026

Another of Mankell's journeys to other countries, other fields.

Louise Cantor, archaeologist, discovers her grown son dead in his apartment. She does not believe it was suicide. Her persistence leads her - and detective Kurt Wallander - into shady areas on other continents. A rich man selflessly helping poor Africans with AIDS - or is it something different? Louise risks her own life to find out what happened to her son.

Wallander discovers a connection of sorts to the missing brain of John F. Kennedy, the stuff of conspiracy theories.

Mankell is always ready to seek out those dark underbellies. ( )

One of the stranger Mankell books I've read. I think I get what he was trying to do, but I can't say I was drawn in too well by the story. Pretty skippable. ( )

Not impressed with this stories progression at all. Louise was a self centered blip! ( )

Rather lame, tortuous read with an ok script. I must have read one good book by Mankell, the Man from Beijing, which was everything this thriller/novel was not, namely fast, twisty, suspenseful and cruel. In contrast, Kennedy’s brain is a slow burner describing the journey of a mourning mom, who tries to reconstruct, being the archaeologist she is, the bits and pieces of key people in her life – her son who is found dead in his Stockholm apartment – presumably as a result of an overdose of sleeping pills, but more likely the victim of an international conspiracy, just like the conspiracy responsible for the mysterious disappearance of President Kennedy’s brains. Her estranged husband, Aron, who fled to Australia and who ends up dead (strangled in Barcelona) after Louise has found him and enticed him to help find their son’s killer. Then there are all the people who played a role in her son Henrik’s life, who she gets to meet in Mozambique. The short of it is a conspiracy of Pharmaceutical companies to test new vaccines against Aids on life humans who have or do not yet have the disease, and who waste away what is left of their miserable lives in a camp near Xai Xai. Louise slowly but surely unravels the story that drove her promiscuous son, and his fight becomes hers, to her own detriment.

My critique? The story could have been told in 200 pages less, at much higher pace, with more perspectives and a lot more suspense. Mankell was clearly seeking a transition in his writing from the Police procedurals which gave him his fame, to a more engaged form of writing that is novelistic and exposing present day challenges like Aids in Africa. He is only partially successful in doing that, though the Swedish aid worker, who practises sadistic sex while fighting for better health was a nice invention. ( )