141 of 142 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent, but if you are new to Wallander Mysteries, read them in sequence..., September 13, 2007
This review is from: The Man Who Smiled (Kurt Wallander Mysteries) (Hardcover)
Other reviewers said all that had to be said. I have one suggestion to readers that are new to Kurt Wallander Mystery Novels. Read them in sequence. Unfortunately, they were translated to English out of order. Here is the correct order: 1. Faceless Killers (1991 2. The Dogs of Riga (1992) 3. The White Lioness 1993 4. The Man Who Smiled 1994 5. Sidetracked 1995 6. The Fifth Woman 1996 7. One Step Behind (1997 8. Firewall (1998 9. Before the Frost (2002) and The Troubled Man (2009), the last case of Wallander. Also, consider another 'non-Wallander' mystery: The Return of the Dancing Master (2000) and The Man From Beijing (2010). I hope I didn't miss anything...
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!, January 22, 2007
This review is from: The Man Who Smiled (Kurt Wallander Mysteries) (Hardcover)
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain:
At least I 'm sure it may be so in Denmark." Hamlet.
And I'm sure, after reading Henning Mankell's "The Man Who Smiled", that it may be so in Sweden as well.
"The Man Who Smiled" is the fourth book in the popular Inspector Kurt Wallander mystery series. An aging attorney has been found dead on a desolate strip of road. The local police think it is an accident brought about by the dense fog that surrounded the area that night. The man's son, also an attorney, seeks out is friend Kurt Wallander to ask for help. He thinks his father has been murdered. Wallander isn't really interested. He'd killed a man in the line of duty and has been on leave ever since. He has no taste for police work, is loaded up with antidepressants and drinks to excess. But when his friend is found murdered, the same guilt that drove Wallander away from police work compels him to return to help solve the murder of the friend and what may be the murder of the friend's father.
As Wallander returns to work he finds himself thinking that one of Sweden's richest men may have some part in the murders. He is very rich and very powerful. So powerful that he can afford to keep a smile affixed to his permanently suntanned face. It is a smile of condescension and smugness. It is a smile that says "I am untouchable." Wallander battles to put his life back together while he struggles to put together the pieces of a very complex crime puzzle.
Mankell's Kurt Wallander 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. Wallander's work performance is 99 per cent driven by perspiration and only 1 per cent driven by inspiration. He is not Sherlock Holmes but he is smart and he is persistent. As noted, "The Man Who Smiled" is the fourth in the Wallander Series. They have all been enjoyable to read even if the series has its ups and downs. As with any series the reader is either drawn to the main character or bored by the main character. Although Wallander is stoic and a bit plodding I somehow find him to be a compelling character. Mankell has also done a good job in fleshing out the characters of Wallander's police unit.
Ultimately, there is nothing new or unique about the structure of the Wallander books. However, the setting (southern Sweden) and the cast of characters created by Mankell makes these books easy to pick up and a bit harder to put down. If you like police procedurals "The Man Who Smiled" is well worth reading. L. Fleisig
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Some Problems, January 28, 2008
Too late did I learn that the translator of this book is not the same as the translator of "One Step Behind." But as I was reading, I noticed a distinct difference in tone between then two novels. There were several instances in which the translation came up with idiomatic usage, such as the expression "fishy" that seemed out of place and jarring. Elsewhere, the novel suffered from an overall flatness that was strikingly different from other Mankell novels.
But there were other problems, as noted by some of the other reviewers. The lead up to the conclusion was too forced and strained credulity. The fact that Wallander would remain inside the mansion without calling for backup at any point did not make sense, likewise his partner's delay in calling for help herself. Also, the idea of a supremely wealthy man would utilize a land mine to murder a potentially troublesome witness seemed quite ludicrous to me. The bad guy, Harderberg, was also a big disppointment: extremely two dimensional and flat. The attempt to make him seem aloof by affixing a permanent smile to his face only added to the sense that he was more pastiche that person. It was as though Mankell had taken the attributes of several other characters and decided to utilize the most superficial of each. His language was stilted and pure cliche. This could also have been a result of the not so good translation.
For all of this, I read the novel to the end. Mankell is great at creating a dark and drizzly world where his characters try and figure out who they are, which at the same time trying to solve a crime. Wallander is a great character, flawed and human and consistent from one novel the the next.
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