Faceless Killers (Kurt Wallender Mystery) [Mass Market Paperback]

Henning Mankell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2008 | Series: Kurt Wallender Mystery

One frozen January Morning at 5 am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he expects is a routine call out. When he reaches the isolated farmhouse he discovers a bloodbath. An old man has been tortured and beaten to death, his wife lies barely alive beside his shattered body, victims of violence beyond reason. The woman supplies Wallander with his only clue: the perpetrators may have been foreign. When this is leaked to the press, racial hatred is unleashed. Kurt Wallander is a senior police officer at Ystad, a small town in the wind-lashed Swedish province of Skane. His life is a shambles. His wife has left him, his daughter refuses to speak to him, even his ageing father barely tolerates him. He works tirelessly, eats badly and drinks the nights away in a lonely, neglected flat. But now winter closes its grip on Ystad, and Wallander, his tenacious efforts closely monitored by the tough minded (and disarmingly attractive) district attorney Anette Brolin, must forget his trouble, and throw himself into a battle against time and xenophobia.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you remember with pleasure those dark and gloomy Martin Beck mysteries by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, you'll be glad to plunge into the first of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallender mysteries to appear in English. Wallender's personal life can occasionally seem more depressing than even a provincial Swedish detective should be asked to bear, but his investigative skills are strictly first rate. And Mankell's story of the brutal murder of an elderly farm couple uncovers an unusual aspect of life in modern Sweden--a streak of fear and prejudice against the many newcomers from Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe who have sought asylum there. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In his first appearance in English, Swedish bestselling author Mankell combines thriller-quality entertainment with a depiction of anti-foreigner prejudice in Sweden, painted here as a very chilly place indeed. Since his wife walked out on him, Kurt Wallender, a middle-aged cop in the small town of Lenarp, has drowned his sorrows in opera and far too much liquor. Such consolations can't help him absorb the scene at the Lovgren farm, where elderly Johannes Lovgren has been brutally beaten and stabbed to death and where his wife, Maria, is found barely alive with a noose around her neck. Rydberg, a police force old-timer, says the noose's unusual knot and the word foreigner, which Maria uttered before she died, are important. Wallender puts those clues on the back burner when he learns that Johannes, ostensibly a simple farmer, had a secret life involving wealth and connections unknown to his wife. However, a leak to the press complicates the investigation by arousing anti-immigrant feelings, some of which are expressed in anonymous threats. Mankell is clearly a skilled writer, and his portrait of Wallender (who periodically slides beneath respectability) is effective. But he provides essential information only at the last minute, which makes the solution feel more like an appendix than a conclusion. Also, American readers may find odd Mankell's bundling of his upright anti-racism message with broad notions of what constitutes acceptable social control.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Random House UK (September 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099445220
• ISBN-13: 978-0099445227
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,680,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander mysteries are global bestsellers and have been adapted for television as a BAFTA Award-winning BBC series starring Kenneth Branagh. Mankell was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's Macallan Gold Dagger and the German Tolerance Prize, among many others. He divides his time between Sweden and Mozambique.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

123 of 124 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Strong Debut Novel--Great New Mystery Series!, March 18, 2002

By 

Craig Larson (Maple Grove, MN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Faceless Killers: A Kurt Wallander Mystery (Paperback)

Now this was a find. Recently, I was reading book reviews in either _Booklist_ or _Library Journal_ and came across a rave for the latest Mankell translation, _One Step Behind_. When my next opportunity to order a few books came around, I put several Mankell titles on the list and _Faceless Killers_ is the first in his Kurt Wallander series. Mankell is a Swedish author and his books are translations and have been hailed as the first series to truly live up to the standards set by authors Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and their Martin Beck mysteries. I can't comment on that, never having read a Martin Beck, but I sure enjoyed this book.

As the story opens, an elderly farmer discovers that his neighbors, also elderly, have been attacked. The husband has been gruesomely tortured and killed and his wife left for dead. Before she dies in the hospital, her last word is "foreign." With anti-immigrant sentiment running high already, the last thing the police need is for this to slip out to the media, but someone in the department leaks the information and suddenly refugee camps in the area are being firebombed. When a Somali refugee is killed, seemingly at random, Wallander and his men have two difficult cases to untangle.

This was a very strong mystery, with a great central character and careful attention to settings. Wallander is cut from the same cloth as John Rebus and Alan Banks. He's struggling with loneliness after his wife has unexpectedly left him and his close ties with his daughter have been severed. He has to deal with an aging, possibly senile, father and his attraction to the new female district attorney who is filling in on an interim basis, and who happens to be married. Plus, he's drinking too much and putting on weight due to a steady diet of pizza and fast food.

Wallander is a compelling character who spends much of his time brooding about the state of the world and the state of his society and, interestingly, he seems to have some sympathy for the anti-immigrant mentality. He's concerned that just about anyone can come to the country and request asylum, even crooks and shady characters. And, the way the system is painted in the book, with officials unsure of where to locate specific refugees, etc., we can see how the task of the police is made much more difficult than it need be. But tracking down the murderer of the Somali refugee is his job and he does it, even when a former policeman seems to have some connection to the crime.

A very interesting mystery and one that held my attention throughout. Even though the murders which open the book seem to be impossible to solve, Wallander will not let them go. He sticks to the investigation, which drags on for quite a long time, and finally sees it through. I will definitely be reading more books in this series. Highly recommended.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid Swedish Series Debut, April 16, 2005

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Faceless Killers: The First Kurt Wallander Mystery (Paperback)

Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo invented the modern Swedish police procedural with their ten-book Martin Beck series, which ended in the late 1970s. Mankell picks up where they left off, introducing a new weary policeman with this first in the Kurt Wallender series, which was originally published in 1991. Just as the Martin Beck series was a lens for the authors' liberal view of a changing Swedish society, Mankell uses the crime novel as a way of addressing the dilemmas of modern Sweden. In this first book, an elderly couple in the southern coastal town of Ystad are brutally tortured and murdered, and the only clue is the word "foreigners." As there are a number of refugee camps in the nearby countryside, the issue of immigration and asylum becomes central to the story.

With the chief out of town, Wallender spearheads the investigation into the apparently motiveless crime, while at the same time struggling to cope with his disintegrating personal life. His wife has just left him, his teenage daughter is estranged from him, and his aging father gives new meaning to the word cantankerous. It doesn't help that Wallender eats junk food for meals and drinks himself to sleep. Soon a firebombing of a refugee camp increases the pressure for a quick solution, and then a Somali is shotgunned to death, making for even more problems. Despite the best efforts of Wallender's team, they just can't seem to get anywhere as the months drag on. The breakthrough that leads to the solution seems to come out of nowhere, but it works nonetheless.

The story is written in prose that can perhaps best be described as methodical, and when combined with the bleak weather, it ably captures the reserved nature of Scandinavia. The immigration issue is handled fairly well and raises difficult questions. Wallender, probably like most of his countrymen, finds himself troubled by the situation and straddling the fence in many ways. Alas, other than Wallender, who himself is a borderline parody of a middle-aged alcoholic mess of a cop, the characters aren't developed very much. One gets the sense that some, such as his father, daughter, and the new prosecutor will be developed in the future, but his colleagues all blend together in a faceless mass. This is a disappointment, for as sympathetic a character as Wallender is, he can't really carry the book on his own. Hopefully future installments will see a more well-rounded cast of supporting characters. Still, the procedural aspect is very good and the overall atmosphere will be interesting to those who like crime novels from foreign climes.

Note: The book was made into a 3 1/2 hour mini-series for Swedish television in 1994 which is apparently unavailable in English.

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining procedural let down by poor translation, October 9, 2000

By 

"scottish_lawyer" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faceless Killers: A Kurt Wallander Mystery (Paperback)

Henning Mankell was a new writer to me, but having seen comparisons of his genre fiction with that of Ian Rankin I tried this novel.

This is the first in Mankell's Inspector Wallander series. Set in rural Sweden it is a police procedural. The opening chapters of the novel are gripping. It begins with a vicious murder to which Wallander is called. There are few clues, other than the last word of the second murder victim, "Foreigners". When news of this leaks out Wallander is drawn into a series of racially motivated incidents, and investigations around camps holding asylum seekers.

The tension is built up well in the first half of the novel, and the investigation of the murder, and the racial incidents, maintains high interest. The second half of the novel is more slackly paced, the denouement slightly disappointing.

Wallander is a fascinating character, and while the novel is third person narrative, so much is written from Wallander's perspective that the novel might as well be in the first person. Wallander is not the most likeable of characters. He has a strained relationship with his father and daughter, has recently separated, and falls into a number of stereotypes as the "loner" cop. Wallander's flaws, his racism (his observations on asylum seekers, for example), and his misogyny, for example, create a rounded well-drawn character. You may not like Wallander but so crafted is the character that his motivation is comprehensible.

However, the depth given to Wallander means that supporting characters suffer. Wallander's father - never satisfied, slightly ill-tempered, and suffering from a serious illness - has potential to be an interesting character, but seems instead to act as a checkbox to note Wallander's famly troubles. Others have a poorer fate. The prosecutor (and putative lust interest) Ms Brolin is one character that seems particularly flat. So ill-drawn are some of the characters that one wonders if a first person narrative may suit Mankell more, allowing Wallander the depth, and giving the excuse of Wallander's perception of others to justify their poorer treatment.

With this flaw, Wallander's work reminds me more of RD Wingfield's Frost series than Rankin's Rebus - where incidental characters tend to be fleshed out.

Most serious flaw in the novel, though, is the translation. Mankell's prose is rendered in a stilted manner, with a number of glaring grammatical problems. Mankell seems ill-served by a tin-eared translation.

This was an enjoyable novel, that started very well, but tailed off towards its conclusion. Wallander is a character I would like to see more of, and I intend to read other books of Mankell's. The series does hold much promise. But if you're looking for the new Ian Rankin try elsewhere (e.g. Denise Mina).