Henning Mankell (1948–2015)

I'd already come across Kurt Wallander thanks to the excellent Kenneth Branagh series, but this is the first time I've picked up one of the original novels. Happily, I liked it so much that I'm all ready to go on a rampage and buy the rest of the books AND the two television series. I love it when that happens!

The novel opens with the discovery of a horrific murder in the isolated farming community of Lunnarp. Called in by a terrified neighbour, Inspector Wallander arrives to find a show more mutilated and bloodied old man dead in his farmhouse bedroom. His wife is alive, but only barely, with a noose cruelly knotted around her neck. Armed with a host of confusing clues, uneasy hunches and the word 'foreign', repeated by the old woman on her deathbed, Wallander and his team must pull out all the stops to find the killers before the media storm around the case sparks a national wave of racial hate crime.

I found the whole novel absolutely fascinating, and it was a great brain work-out. I couldn't stop mulling over everything that had happened so far, and every time I put the book down I was itching to get back to it again! I think it helps that the reader is basically inside Kurt Wallander's mind from start to finish, even though it's written in the third person. He's a thoughtful, clever, kind and immensely human character, with a fierce sense of justice and a touch of quiet vulnerability - the kind of cop every reader will be rooting for! I also liked that this was very much a procedural novel, rather than a forensic gorefest, and the way the Swedish setting really came to life on the page. Mr Mankell - you have another new convert! Highly recommended. show less

Eine magische Aura umweht den afrikanischen Straßenjungen Nelio: Noch nie hat jemand gewagt, ihn zu verprügeln. Vielleicht weil aus dem 10-Jährigen, dem sich die irdischen Abgründe viel zu früh erschlossen haben, eine greise Weisheit spricht. Jetzt aber liegt Nelio mit schweren Schusswunden auf dem Dach eines ärmlichen Theaters. Dort erzählt er -- zwischen kräftezehrenden Fieberschüben -- dem Bäckerjungen José Antonio Maria Vaz sein Leben. Das beginnt mit der Erinnerung an die show more Banditen, die sein Dorf niederbrannten, seine Schwester töteten und vor denen er geflüchtet ist, als sie ihn zwingen wollten, einen Verwandten zu erschießen. Und es endet bei den Straßenkindern in der Stadt, denen Nelio zu einem an Fairness und Reife geradezu übermenschlichen Anführer wurde: Gestohlen jedenfalls wird nicht unter seinem Regime; bestenfalls -- in der Villa eines verreisten Entwicklungshelfers -- der Kühlschrank leer gegessen. show less

Henning Mankell's first Wallander novel introduces us to the weary, self-doubting Swedish detective with a pacy double murder investigation. The crime is vicious, and the emphasis here is on Sweden as a changing world; Wallander constantly reflects on the horrific details that he would not have thought possible only a few years before. Wallander himself is slipping into a graceless middle age of divorce, bad eating and social anxiety, so both man and country are betraying their ideals. show more Mankell constantly infuses his writing (or, at least, the translated writing) with details that bring Wallander and his world alive as natural by-products of each other. The reader is invited to identify with the detective, not with sentimentality or pity, but with Wallander's own cold realization that all things fall apart. The mystery here is secondary, which for most of the novel isn't an issue; it does start to drag in the later chapters, only to very suddenly ramp up at the end. Taken as a crime novel, "Faceless Killers" isn't totally satisfying; there are mysteries out there that are simply constructed better, with a tighter grip. As the introductory portrait of a very believable man, however, it succeeds beautifully. show less

This fifth in Mankell's "Kurt Wallander" series (my 3rd) is a superb and detailed police procedural surrounding two particularly appalling murders. Wallander is a moody and depressive man who sounds much older than his late 40-something years, but he is a talented, patient and thoughtful detective. Being inside his head for the 400+ pages of this novel as he unravels a particularly complex and conflicting case is pure delight. Along the way, we learn of the issues and difficulties plaguing show more crime-fighting in Sweden and elsewhere in the world and the psychology of both the criminals and those who make a career of catching them. The suspense builds very, very slowly in the book - deliciously so. This is the best Wallander novel of the three I have read thus far. show less