Lynne King's Reviews > Faceless Killers

There's something about Swedish authors that both fascinates me and tugs at my heartstrings. Henning Mankell does indeed do that for me with his Inspector Kurt Wallander.

The air of suspense begins with the words:

“He has forgotten something, he knows that for sure when he wakes up. Something he dreamt during the night. Something he ought to remember. He tries to remember. But sleep is like a black hole. A well that reveals nothing of its contents.”

And this same suspense kept me utterly enthralled through to the last page where I came face to face with a remarkable and yet unexpected dénouement.

We soon discover that a gruesome murder has taken place in a farm, with only a neighbouring farmhouse, outside the sleepy village of Lunnarp.

A seventy year old man wakes up at 4.45 am. He’s surprised because normally he sleeps later but he knows there’s something wrong. He cannot hear his friend and neighbour’s horse whinnying. He investigates and discovers a “slaughter-house” next door.

When Inspector Wallander arrives at the crime scene and observes the atrocities committed on the elderly couple, Maria and and Johannes Lövgren, he’s determined come what may to find the murderers. He’s convinced somehow that more than one person is involved.

There are two elements that intrigue him. Why was a noose hanging around Maria’s neck and why would the horse have been fed in the stable? Johannes has regrettably been killed but Maria clings on to life for a while in the hospital. Prior to her death, she mentions an odd word. It is this word that is to be the clue in the who, what, when, where, why equation.

With dogged determination, following every conceivable avenue, deductive reasoning and going by his intuition, a frustrated Wallander continues in his investigation. There are many false leads and dead ends. Was it a robbery? Did the couple have money? Enemies? Wrong suspects are interviewed. The investigation is indeed frustrating for everyone involved and time-consuming, spreading over a six month period.

That’s the outline but it’s the simple and fascinating text and the attention to detail that I’m so taken with. There’s the main plot but then the sub-plot showing the personal aspects of Wallander’s life. I truly empathised with him. His wife Mona had left him three months ago and was in the process of divorcing him, his nineteen year old daughter Linda wants nothing more to do with him after a failed suicide attempt when she was fifteen. He is constantly arguing with his widowed father, a painter, who continuously paints more or less the same picture, may add a grouse or a tree to make it slightly different but still manages to sell them. He has been painting the same motif all his life in fact. He’s becoming confused and Wallander feels that he shouldn’t be left in the house, that’s isolated, all on his own. He’s also losing touch with his sister Kristina.

Wallander drinks too much, is overweight through eating too many pizzas and the like, since Mona left him, loves his opera, especially Maria Callas and Traviata, is loyal to his colleagues at the Ystad police station, especially Rydberg who suffers badly from rheumatism and uses a cane; is constantly wondering how he can improve his lot and especially his relationships with his family. Works long hours, suffers from loneliness and seems to have a constantly bruised face from fights and the like and yet I loved his character so much.

His mantra was “a time to live and a time to die”. “He had adopted this incantation many years ago, when he was a young policeman, cruising the streets of Malmö, his home town. A drunk had pulled out a big butcher’s knife as he and his partner were trying to take him away……Wallander was stabbed deep, right next to his heart. A few millimetres were all that saved him from an untimely death. He had been twenty-three then, suddenly profoundly aware of what it meant to be a policeman. The incantation was his way of fending off the memories.”

The Swedish elements also add to the drama, winds, darkness, snow, temperatures below freezing point… There was the backdrop of many refugee camps, with people looking for asylum. Violence was increasing.

There is definitely an air of gloom that pervades this book but I still love it:

“Overnight a storm moved in across Skåne. Kurt Wallander was sitting in his untidy flat as the winter wind tore at the roof tiles, drinking whisky and listening to a German recording of Aïda, when everything went dark and silent. He went over to the window and looked out into the darkness. The wind was howling, and somewhere an advertising sign was banging against a wall.”

There’s some light relief thrown in when Wallander meets the deputy public prosecutor, a married woman called Anette Brolin. His instincts tell him that he should not get involved with her and yet...

This is the first in the Kurt Wallander series. I don't really like series too much as they tend, well in my opinion anyway, to become like a template. But yes I will read number 2!

All in all, a fantastic book and reading more about Henning Mankell, I see that he has had cancer since the beginning of this year and is currently having treatment. I wish him well and I’m quite sure that he’ll make a good recovery. Treatment has improved and advanced so much from what it was even ten years ago. New life-saving treatments are constantly being found…