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My experience with Scandinavian thrillers is very limited, and no, I have not read any Stieg Larsson. Henning Mankell is reputed to be a standard of the genre that Larsson dominates these days. I was curious and hoped to find a new thriller/mystery author so I picked up this audiobook.

Mankell’s serial character, Kurt Wallander, is a detective in the Ystad police force in Sweden. When the book opens, he’s on leave, trying to recover from the experience of having killed a man – justifiably, in self defense, but still. He has just decided to retire permanently when an old friend, Sten Torstensson, appears, begging Wallander to look into his (Sten’s) father’s death. Gustav Torstensson’s death was ruled accidental – a car crash – but Sten believes he was murdered. Wallander refuses to rejoin the police force – until Sten is killed just weeks later. This convinces our detective, and he comes back to work to investigate the two deaths, and the crimes that spiral on from there.

I am not terribly impressed. The case is rather convoluted, but not convincingly so; I am not enraptured by the twisting threads of guilt and intrigue; I am not held on the edge of my seat. The investigation of the crime is drawn out; many pages pass in which relatively little happens. I was impatient at some point to get the thing over with, especially since the reader knows who the bad guy is from the beginning, thus killing the suspense. (Sometimes this is done well, but not here.) Wallander is somewhat developed as a character, but I felt that we were told more than made to feel his trauma, his personal demons, the difficult family relationships he struggles with. (I’m willing to allow that it might help to read the whole series, or to read in order. But then again, I feel that any individual novel should stand alone, too.) There was a certain amount of… well, it sounded like whining to me.

One detail I struggled with: I know that guns are far, far less prevalent in Scandinavia than they are here in my native USA (and my native Texas in particular). But I still have trouble believing that a Swedish police officer, when approached by a man brandishing a pistol – not aimed at him, and with assurances that he means well – would faint. This and other details felt unrealistic to me and took away from my ability to get lost in the story. That, or the Swedish police are wussies?

In one of the final scenes we supposedly learn all the details and backstory and tie up the loose ends, but the explanation of all those loose ends wasn’t convincing to me; it felt unfinished. And forgive me for being jaded – maybe I’ve been exposed to too much hyper-violent stateside crime drama – but Wallander’s deep shock at the depravity of the crimes in this story felt a little bit extreme to me. Again – this is a police officer? Is this really the worst he’s ever seen by an exponential factor?

Sorry for being harsh, Mr. Mankell; I understand you have a devoted following. But either I missed something, or I need to steer clear of Kurt Wallander in future.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: audio, mystery |