'Faceless Killers' by Henning Mankell

Faceless Killers, Henning Mankell (3.5)

Henning Mankell has been credited with starting the Scandinavian crime novel trend, which more recently includes best sellers by Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson. This is the first of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, which follows a Swedish detective in the rural area near Malmo. Wallander is the definition of an anti-hero. He’s clever, but very broken and rather unlikable. Besides signs of alcoholism, gluttony, and misogyny, he admits to feelings of bigotry and self-pity. Oddly, through all of this, the reader really wants him to solve the crime. In this first Wallander novel, a couple has been found violently murdered in their farmhouse. The clues are sparse and a possibly related death in a refugee community sidetracks the police. An interesting theme, given this book was published in 1991, has to do with Swedish society and it’s increasing issues with refugees from Africa and Eastern Europe. I wanted to like this book more, but found a few niggling problems. The writing did not flow; it was more like a staccato pace (which could have been due to the translation). I also felt the solution of the crime did not make sense, given the severity of the violence done to the victims (as was mentioned several times- ‘It had to be a crime of passion’). The character of Wallander is an interesting one and overall I was intrigued enough to try another.