Customer Reviews

The Fifth Woman: A Kurt Wallander Mystery

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Swedish writer Mankell's graceful, unadorned prose provides an affecting voice for his melancholy protagonist, Ystad police detective Kurt Wallander, whose own mid-life difficulties give way to the pursuit of a cunning serial killer.

As the book opens, a woman receives information that her mother has been murdered along with four nuns in an African convent, the crime hushed up. Then an old man who writes bird poetry is impaled on sharpened bamboo stakes embedded in a ditch on his property while the woman watches from his bird tower.

Wallander, just home from a pleasant trip to Italy with his father, a rejuvenation of their taciturn relationship, investigates a break-in at a flower shop from which nothing was taken, receives reports of a growing vigilante militia movement and eventually discovers the body of the bird poet. Meanwhile the reader learns that the flower shop proprietor is a captive, slowly starving. He is missing more than a week - supposedly on an orchid-buying trip - before anyone realizes.

The grisly narrative builds slowly, in plain, unhurried cadences. The fits, starts and frustrations of police procedure mingle with Wallander's concerns for his father and plans for a future with his lover, Baiba - all against a thrum of background tension - the bound, terrified man, the woman ticking off plans on a meticulous schedule, selecting her next victim.

As the murder count rises, Wallander and his team delve into the background of the victims, uncovering dark secrets, making tenuous connections, inching toward a solution that horrifies them all. Mankell's ("Fearless Killers," "Sidetracked") plot organization and pacing is masterful and his perplexing, atmospheric story is all the more gripping delivered in measured, understated prose.

I picked up "The Fifth Woman" by Henning Mankell because a reviewer favorably compared it to the classic "The Laughing Policeman" by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo (Swedish wife/husband writing team). It doesn't disappoint. This is a book that is worth the price of a hardcover -- meaty, substantive, intricately/well plotted, with great characters.

The three things I noticed that bind all three authors in their works are: 1) the Swedish people's dislike and distrust of the police, 2) the chill and loneliness that seems to pervade human relationships, and 3) police inspectors who are brilliant, meticulous, conscientious, introspective and given to depression. These Swedish police procedurals are not a barrel of laughs, but rather they are thoughtful, well written, and original.

"The Fifth Woman" starts out with the murders in Africa of 4 nuns and a female visitor. The rest of the novel takes place with these murders' ramifications in Sweden where a serial killer is dispatching men, each very differently. The title refers not only to the 5th woman murdered in Africa, but also the 5th woman in Sweden who leads police inspector, Kurt Wallander, to the Swedish serial murderer.

American police procedurals tend to reveal more murder motives from the get-go. In this novel the motive is a core plot element and isn't revealed until later in the book. The reader also knows a few things about the killer early in the book that the police don't know and it is fascinating to watch the police reach the "same place in the book" as the reader. I was reading a well regarded American mystery writer and stopped the book to read "The Fifth Woman". When I returned to the American book after finishing Mankell's opus, it was sophmoric in comparison. This is a book for the serious mystery reader and well worth the effort.

Ystad, Sweden is not a place where one would expect a homicide wave. Yet three brutal murders have shook up the citizens and stunned the police. Inspector Kurt Wallander sees no link between the vicious killings except that they were all well planned in advance and fierce and slow in terms of the victim.

Wallander and his staff begin looking for an apparent serial killer. However, to the shock of the Inspector, evidence points towards a female culprit. While the law enforcement officials struggle to switch paradigms, the killer becomes angrier, more hateful, bolder and deadlier. Even Wallander wonders if the killer can truly be a genius and a lunatic at the same time?

THE FIFTH WOMAN is the fourth Wallander tale to come to the States and like its predecessors is a fine police investigative novel. The story line slowly evolves as the audience spends much time inside the minds of Wallander and his foe. This turns the who-done-it into more of a psychological thriller than a typical serial killer investigation normally is. Not for anyone who wants fast-paced in your face action, Henning Mankell provides those readers who enjoy a more gradual speed with a wonderful police procedural.

Harriet Klausner

This is the sixth book in the Wallander series, and probably the last I'll read for quite a while. The series started out promisingly enough with Faceless Killers, an interesting police procedural plot introducing the reader to the ever-forlorn Wallander and his southern Swedish district. However, subsequent books have strayed into over-the-top thriller areas, including plotlines involving a 14-year-old serial killer (Sidetracked) and the attempted assassination of Nelson Mandela (The White Lioness)! This book returns to the procedural format, although at 450 pages perhaps overdoes it a bit.

Rather oddly, the story begins with the death of a woman in North Africa (presumably Algeria), which apparently gives her daughter the psychic release needed to embark on a series of killings from a list of names. The first of these involves a retired car dealer who falls into a punji-stake trap. Wallander, who has just come back from vacationing with his father in Italy, is once again drawn into an elaborate serial killer's plot. This time, there's very little to go on and as the investigative team attempts to dig into the background of the retired man, it takes a very long time for Wallander to get any traction on the case. Eventually a connection is made with the disappearance of a local florist and his body's subsequent discovery. Still, the pace is excruciatingly slow, even more so than others in the series. When a third body shows up, the motive for the killings is finally deduced, but there's still plenty of work to do in order to piece together the common element that will identify the murderer. As Wallander winnows down the massive amount of forensic, historical, and psychological data, he must also contend with the appearance of citizen vigilante groups and the sudden death of his father, not to mention his own ambivalence about his relationship with long-distance lover Baiba.

Eventually, Wallander's trademark methodical analysis and a little inspiration guide him to the right answer. But by then the reader is pretty exhausted by the whole thing. True, it's realistic to show the massive amount of footwork that it takes to follow up every lead until it dead ends, but since the reader is given access to the killer all the way through, it doesn't make for great tension. It also rings somewhat false that Wallander and the other police are constantly moaning about how brutal the killings are. These are the same police who were dealing with a serial killer scalper a year or two previously, and in Faceless Killers the inciting crime is the brutal bludgeoning murder of an elderly couple! Similarly, for most of the book Wallander completely rules out the notion that a woman could be the killer. This seems like a rather unlikely blind spot, considering that they've just dealt with a serial killer who is barely more than a child in "Sidetracked". As in the other books in the series, Wallander ruminates on the rise of crime in Sweden, and contemplates quitting the police force. All in all, the book is dreary and plodding, and the insights into Swedish society are similar to those given in previous books in the series. Time for something new.

Kurt Wallander is both the main character and setting of Mankell's 'procedural' crime series. While based in southern Sweden, "The Fifth Woman" is in fact grounded in the rugged landscape of Wallander's interior life - his memories, hopes, shopping lists, prejudices and anxieties. Not since Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder have I read such an angst-ridden and ethically driven protagonist. This is the ultimate introverted hero - he solves crimes using weapons of solitude, intuition, memory-interrogation and a phenonomenal eye for detail. How could you not love a policeman who reminds himself in the midst of the chase to book the laundry room, alert his superiors to a colleague's excessive workload or take time to grieve for his father. Mankell also provides a vivid account of the broader issues that confronted Swedish society in the 1990s - refugees, law and order, social capital and shifting moral foundations. Wallander characterises the times as an age where people have forgotten how to darn their socks, preferring to discard a blemish rather than repair a resource. And the storyline of "The Fifth Woman"? Like Laurie King's "Night Work", "The Fifth Woman" explores issues of violence, revenge and enforcing justice when the system cannot deliver. It is, like Mankell's other Wallander titles, a monumental chronicle of detail, connection and the unfolding of a tightly-bound investigation. The Swedish atmospherics will also help take one's mind off an endless summer.

yet there is method in 't."
Hamlet: Act II, Scene 2.

Four nuns have been found brutally murdered in a convent in an unnamed North African country. A fifth woman has also been murdered. Although news of the murders is suppressed and the fifth woman is never publicly identified a policewoman with a conscience forwards letters found in her possession to her daughter in Sweden. Soon thereafter a series of seemingly unconnected and brutal murders grip the small, Southern-Swedish city of Ystad. The murders are well planned and executed. They seem designed to inflict as much pain as possible. Detective Inspect Kurt Wallander is tasked with identifying the killer or killers and the motive behind the killing. If Wallander cannot discover a motive he must at least learn enough about the killer's method to stop him or her before more people lay dead in strange surrounding. That is the plot of Henning Mankell's "The Fifth Woman".

"The Fifth Woman" is the sixth book in Mankell's Kurt Wallander series. This series is often compared to the Martin Beck detective mysteries authored by the husband and wife team of Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall. Wallander, like Beck, is a police detective in Sweden. Unlike Beck, whose beat was Stockholm, Wallander works in the small southern-Swedish city of Ystad. The Wallander series takes place in the 1990s while the Beck series took place in the 1960s and 1970s. Although I tend to prefer the Beck series, the Wallander books are entertaining page-turners. Mankell stays well within the `police procedural' formula and has not tried to reinvent the genre. However, he has done a good job, through the first books in the series, of developing the character of Mankell and his supporting cast of characters. Wallander is no Sherlock Holmes and gets results more by perspiration than inspiration. He is also a fully drawn character. We see him dealing with the break-up of a marriage, an estranged daughter, and a father who is developing senile dementia. The supporting characters, particularly his fellow detectives, are also well drawn.

As the plot in "The Fifth Woman" plays itself out Mankell does a good job of showing the grunt work that goes into a murder investigation. Mankell also does a good job portraying the relationship of Wallander with his fellow police officers and with his family, especially his aged and failing father. Wallander is shown as a flawed man, a man with a temper and someone who can be more than a bit stubborn. However, I found myself drawn to the character as much for his flaws as for his detective skills.

The Fifth Woman is, in my opinion, one of the better books in the Wallander series and I have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone interested in a good police story, especially one set in a location outside the United States. Recommended. L. Fleisig

Chief Inspector Kurt Wallender is moody by nature, but as The Fifth Woman opens, he's feeling pretty positive. Kurt's elderly father has always wanted to see Rome, and Kurt agreed to accompany him. Father and son enjoyed the vacation, as well as each other's company, and Kurt comes home ready to return to work. Sadly, another serial killer case will soon rear its ugly head, destroying Kurt's newfound peace of mind. When his dad suddenly dies, Kurt's chronic depression returns with a vengeance. He throws himself into the new case, but clues and leads are hard to come by.

The Fifth Woman is perhaps Mankell's best written work to date, and that's saying something. This is an engrossing case, especially because it soon becomes apparent that, uncharacteristically, a woman is involved in the horrific murders, each of which is unique in style. Picture a pit with stakes in it, and a large oven, and you get the idea. Wallender and his team work painstakingly, day and night, to "decode the language", to decipher the motive behind the staging of each death. The investigative process is thoroughly described, and seemingly unrelated details begin to merge, ever so slowly, into a coherent picture. Along the way, readers catch glimpses of Swedish life, which, to the chagrin of its citizens, has become increasingly violent. Among the complications facing the police is the rise of civilian vigilante groups, whose actions simply blur that picture. Wallender seriously ponders the question of how much longer he can endure the nature of his work.

This is a police procedural, but, IMO, it's too literary, too fluent and deep, to be forced into a genre. Credit is due to Mankell, for sure, for his creation, but also to Steven Murray, for his masterful, seamless translation.

Though a literary omnivore, mystery novels are a territory that I've explored very little, and I happily defer to the many excellent Amazon reviews written by expert mystery-philes regarding how well The Fifth Woman measures up in its genre. For veteran mystery readers, be forewarned: my knowledge of your reading preference is so minimal that I had to look up the phrase "police procedural" (and yes, The Fifth Woman fits that definition).

The plot has been well-described by previous reviews: three brutal murders, diverse and apparently unconnected "dots" of data, a determined team of police officers laboring to fit the pieces together. The novel resembles a video of an egg dropped from significant height, run in reverse slow motion: the yolk and the pieces of shell slowly and beautifully reform themselves until a perfectly formed egg stands before you.

I like any book, regardless of genre, that stimulates my imagination and expands my horizons, and The Fifth Woman did both. Author Henning Mankell is a complex man, dividing his life between two continents (Eurasia and Africa), giving generously to charities, and deeply involved in political ideology from his youth forward. The complexity of the author is richly reflected in the characters in The Fifth Woman. No simple whodunit, the warp and weft of the fascinatingly woven plot of this book brings the social fabric of life in Sweden into vivid focus. Mankell doesn't simply illustrate that violent crime occurs in Sweden; his characters want to know WHY violent crime is rising. Why is law enforcement chronically underfunded, and what are the social and personal consequences of this? What leads to the formation of "citizen militias", and what are the accompanying dangers? Why do Swedes appear to have a universal disregard for the police? Who knew that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would probably have a significant following amongst a minority, but vocal, part of the Swedish population? How does a human balance the demands of one's job versus one's personal needs, and one's family and romantic relationships?

Mankell draws characters in 3D, or even 4D, as his characters do change over time. His law enforcement veterans are still shocked and sickened by violence, rather than affecting the hard-boiled "I've seen it all" attitude often seen in crime-related fictional media in the U.S. Men and women working side by side develop deep friendships WITHOUT falling into bed with each other. Characters use the bizarre circumstances that befall them to grasp for a sort of wisdom, rather than use them as a cave opening that allows a descent into bitter cynicism. The Fifth Woman is peopled by humans that are neither saints nor demons, only humans that make choices, some more admirable than others. The perpetrator of the crimes in The Fifth Woman has complex motivations, and Mankell has truly written a why-dunit, rather than a whodunit.

Mankell's writing is not characterized by breathtaking turns of phrase or startling imagery. His prose is blunt and to the point, and devoid of flowery language (despite the fact that one of the victims is fanatically interested in orchids). It gets the point across, and keeps the plot in motion. I'll be back for more, of both detective Kurt Wallander, and Mankell.

If Swedish crime novels suit your fancy, consider recently published Box 21: A Novel. Grimmer, more brutal, and just as concerned with social issues as Mankell's The Fifth Woman, it is an eye-widening exposure to a Swedish culture that extends far beyond tall blonds and fine furniture.

With all the hoopla about the Stieg Larsson triology I became interested in other Swedish crime novelists. One of the best is Henning Mankell. His novels about the detective Kurt Wallender who lives and works for the small police department of Ystad in southern Sweden are excellent police procedurals and character studies of fascinating people set against the background of a cold and forbidding landscape. It is as if Phillip Marlowe left the sun splattered streets of Los Angeles to join Ingmar Bergman on a film shoot in Sweden! (Mankell is a son of law of the late Swedish film director).
The Fifth Woman opens in Africa. Four nuns and a Swedish woman are brutally murdered by assailants who break into a convent. Who is she and how is she connected to brutal murders back in Sweden?
The first murder victim is Holger Eriksson. He is impaled on bamboo poles located in a ditch near his isolated home. Eriksson is a bird watcher who is single and aloof. He is a retired car dealer who was quite wealthy.
The second person murdered is Gosta Runfelt. He is found strangled to death with his body bound by ropes in a Swedish forest. Runfelt is the owner of a flower shop whose passion is orchids. He is killed while making plans for a trip to Kenya to see orchids.
The third victim is a man named Blomberg. He is tied up in a bag and tossed to a grisly death under an ice packed lake.
What is the link between the murder victims? Is a single killer responsible for the crimes? Is the murderer a man or a woman? It is answers to these queries that Wallender must answer to solve the horrible crimes.
Wallender and his team at police headquarters have a difficult task in connecting this crimes which have been well planned and executed by a diabolical serial killer. Disturbing secrets are revealed in the course of the narrative about the three men who were so brutally murdered.
Kurt Wallender is in late middle age. He is divorced from Mona and has a grown daughter named Linda who is a student is Stockholm. He has a lover named Baiba who lives in Latvia whom he met during the novel "The Dogs of Riga."He often longs for Baiba to marry him so he can settle down with a labrador puppy and retire from police work.He is an introspective and often morose person who is well drawn by Mankell. His artist father dies shortly after accompanying Wallender on a sightseeing trip to Rome.
This is an excellent novel for those who enjoy gripping crime stories which are well written.

Henning Mankell really nails you to your reading chair from page one with his subtle and quiet horror stories where there is a minimum of the graphical violence you so often see in American thrillers these days. Mankell has an ingenius way of building up his stories which will keep you mystified till the end. He is also weaving into the fabric a honest description of Sweden on the social level and of how police work is developing in the Scandinavian countries. You get to like this Wallander and his Swedish colleagues so much that you are sad when the last page is turned.