232. Faceless Killers
Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell - being a pedant about reading books in the order they were written, it took me a while to get hold of a copy of Faceless Killers, which is the first in the series of books featuring detective Kurt Wallander. Just in time, in fact, to clash with a dramatisation of some of the books which possibly saves me from reading a couple of the later novels!
Anyway, the books are set in southern Sweden where Wallander has been a police detective for the majority of his life. In time honoured detective fashion, his marriage has fallen apart and he's pretty much an alcoholic at the time of Faceless Killers. He's called to investigate the brutal murder of an elderly farming couple where the only clue is that the final words of one of them was 'foreigner', thus apparently putting the blame on a resident of the local refugee camps.
At least Mankell doesn't make any efforts to try and turn Wallander into a stereotypical 'nice guy', showing him as a man struggling to come to terms with the way his world now is, but still essentially wanting to do the right thing. The series continues with The Dogs of Riga, and although it's not likely to be a series I'll go out of my way to read, chances are that I will continue with it.
Anyway, the books are set in southern Sweden where Wallander has been a police detective for the majority of his life. In time honoured detective fashion, his marriage has fallen apart and he's pretty much an alcoholic at the time of Faceless Killers. He's called to investigate the brutal murder of an elderly farming couple where the only clue is that the final words of one of them was 'foreigner', thus apparently putting the blame on a resident of the local refugee camps.
At least Mankell doesn't make any efforts to try and turn Wallander into a stereotypical 'nice guy', showing him as a man struggling to come to terms with the way his world now is, but still essentially wanting to do the right thing. The series continues with The Dogs of Riga, and although it's not likely to be a series I'll go out of my way to read, chances are that I will continue with it.
