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Loading... De man die glimlachte : misdaadroman (1994)by Henning Mankell
Work InformationThe Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell (1994)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This series continues to have odd breaks from conventional mystery plotting that I'm not sure entirely work. In this case, the full nature of the crimes and the reasons behind them are all pretty clear by the half way point then it's a long slog of trying to prove it with precious little tension until the high-stakes finale. Mankell has previously had a tendency to bring in a witness with a remarkably detailed memory late in his stories but didn't this time, instead we get an expository speech almost worthy of a Bond villain at the end (with an appropriately unneccessary death trap being set up for our hero in the process). I like the prose, I enjoy the characterisation, I'm a fan of the series, but each individual installment keeps coming up short for me. Our detective comes to the brink of deciding to quit being a policeman only to have his mind changed after the murder of a friend. He's back into the fray after a year and a half of being away on sick leave because of the mental stress caused by killing a man in his last case. He has a new colleague, a young woman just starting out her career. How do they link three murders and various other crimes to one of the most prominent men in Sweden?
When Henning Mankell, the most famous Swedish writer since Strindberg, published the first Kurt Wallander mystery 14 years ago, he could not have imagined how successful they would be. In Sweden the series triumphed overnight; worldwide it has sold in excess of 20 million copies. British readers were slow to catch up.The Man Who Smiled is the fourth Kurt Wallander book, originally published in Sweden in 1994. It opens with a road accident in thick fog in which a solicitor crashes his car and dies.Questions of responsibility and morality, of justice and democracy are explicitly raised, which is unusual in detective fiction.Wallander, a sternly pensive slogger who eats junk food, is one of the most credible creations in contemporary crime fiction, and The Man Who Smiled is vintage Nordic storytelling. Doch dieser mit großen plakativen Pinselstrichen angelegte Fall will nicht recht überzeugen, weil Autor Henning Mankell zwischen den Zeilen allzu stark moralisiert und in der Harderberg-Figur einen geradezu dämonisch wirkenden menschenverachtenden Kapitalisten als überdimensionales Feindbild installiert.
Fiction.
Mystery.
HTML:The #1 international-bestselling tale of greed, violence, and corporate power from the master of Scandinavian noir: "One of his best" (The Times, London). After killing a man in the line of duty, Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself deep in a personal and professional crisis; during more than a year of sick leave, he turns to drink and vice to quiet his lingering demons. Once he pulls himself together, he vows to quit the Ystad police force for goodjust before a friend who had asked Wallander to look into the death of his father winds up dead himself, shot three times. Far from leaving police work behind, Wallander instead must investigate a formidable suspect: a powerful business tycoon at the helm of a multinational company engaged in extralegal activities. Ann-Britt Hglund, the department's first female detective, proves to be Wallander's best ally as he tries to pierce the smiling faade of the suspicious mogul. But just as he comes close to uncovering the truth, Wallander finds his own life being threatened. In this "exquisitely plotted" thriller, Henning Mankell's mastery of the modern police proceduralwhich has earned him legions of fans worldwide and inspired the BBC show Wallander starring Kenneth Branaghis on vivid display (Publishers Weekly). "This is crime fiction of the highest order." Publishers Weekly, starred review "Compelling . . . Skillfully plotted and suspenseful. . . . A thriller for the thinking reader." The Dallas Morning News "Mankell's novels are a joy." USA Today "Absorbing. . . . In the masterly manner of P.D. James, Mankell projects his hero's brooding thoughts onto nature itself." The New York Times "Wallander is a loveable gumshoe. . . . He is one of the most credible creations in contemporary crime fiction." The Guardian. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)839.7374Literature German literature and literatures of related languages Other Germanic literatures Swedish literature Swedish fiction 1900-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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The case itself is one that would usually not peak my interest - high finance, global companies, the world of lawyers and managers - it is something I do not care reading about. But in this case it did not bother me because Wallander is such a relatable character to me and I saw it all through his eyes. ( )