Customer Reviews

The White Lioness, A Kurt Wallander Mystery

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A new acquaintance was kind enough to mail me a copy of Faceless Killers, Mankell's first Kurt Wallander novel and I have been addicted ever since. The White Lioness is the most compelling of them all. Mankell's Detective Kurt Wallander is excellent company. The plots are interesting but the settings and characters are what haunt my nights and keep me reading long after a more temperate person would have turned off the light. Wallander's interior life is laid bare as he struggles with senseless murders, the frustrations of puzzling through complex homicide investigations, and his own shrinking personal life. The Swedish countryside and an isolated village in Africa become vivid background for a plot that twists and turns through the end. One caveat: this novel is dangerous to personal productivity.

This is the third Kurt Wallander book, and it regrettably marks the series' continued decline in quality since Mankell's promising debut. The first book (Faceless Killers) was a solid police procedural, while the second (The Dogs of Riga) threw the provincial detective inspector into a wildly improbable espionage tale. This next book strays even further from Mankell's strengths and the result is a rather lame and entirely too long attempt at shoehorning Wallander into an international thriller. The story starts promisingly enough-in the opening chapter the reader is shown the seemingly random murder of a real estate agent in southern Sweden. The next 100 pages are quality police procedural stuff, as Wallander leads the hunt for the missing woman. It's a good puzzle, as he pokes into her apparently spotless life and tries to reconstruct her final movements. Then the book takes a U-turn as the story moves to South Africa. It's 1992, Nelson Mandela has recently been released from jail and President de Klerk is trying to steer the country to some kind of peaceful post-apartheid political arrangement. The next 100 pages detail how a secret committee of powerful right-wing racists led by an intelligence operative seek to derail the process -- and have decided to have Mandela assassinated. Rather improbably they complicate matters by having their South African hitman smuggled into Sweden to be trained by an ex-KGB operative. The rationale for this convoluted scheme doesn't really make any sense, and its only purpose is to serve as a flimsy way to link Sweden and Wallander to the story.

Things move along back in southern Sweden, as the woman's body is found and the missing persons case turns into a murder investigation. The procedural aspects are handled as ably as ever, although three books into the series, Wallander's colleagues are still flat, unexplored characters. With the discovery of a powerful radio transmitter, a rare handgun specific to South Africa, and the severed finger of a black man, you'd expect the investigation to become a little more intensive. However, mostly Wallander muses on how odd it all is. As in the last book, once he does get on the trail of the killer (Mankell does this very clumsily, as Wallander is given the ex-KGB agent's name by a bartender who would have no logical reason to know it), he does all manner of improbable stuff. It's appears to be a trademark of the series that just when Wallander's on exactly the right track, he goes home to drink or sleep instead of calling in a raid or picking suspects for interrogation, thus allowing them just enough time to escape. One of the major failings of the series that Wallander is alternately persistent or lazy, depending on what the plot calls for. In any event, while Wallander and the ex-KGB man chase each other back and forth across the Swedish hinterland, another investigation is taking place in South Africa where two loyal government agents unravel the plot from the other end.

In the end, it's all too obvious that Mankell has read Frederick Forsyth's classic thriller The Day of the Jackal, because the similarities are striking: A secret committee plans the assassination of a world leader in order to thwart political change that will do away with their privileged status. A cold-blooded hitman is contracted with. The killing will be done via high-powered sniper rifle. Intrepid investigators will race against time to uncover the plot. Even the ending is the same, in Forsyth's book the police race up stairs just in the nick of time, here the police race up a hillside just in the nick of time. Mankell's version of all this just isn't very compelling. It doesn't help that the book is cluttered with rather insipid lengthy digressions into the psyche of various characters and cheesy expositions on Africa. For example, we learn all about the importance of the "spirit world" for the hitman. More problematically, the reader is told that apartheid is to blame for his becoming a cold-blooded killer. The entire book is overly ambitious, and whenever we leave Wallander and his investigation, it doesn't work. With this book, and to a lesser extent the previous one, it's clear that Mankell's attempts to combine contemporary world affairs with the life of a depressed provincial cop just doesn't work. Fortunately, the next in the series (Sidetracked) stays at home.

This third novel in the Inspector Kurt Wallender series is much thicker than the three others I've read, and I'm of two minds about it. It starts off the way you would expect from a procedural: A female real estate agent is cold-bloodedly killed with a bullet through the head, and for no reason Wallender or his colleagues can figure out. While they're investigating the apparent scene of the crime (they haven't actually turned up the body yet), a nearby house explodes. Then they discover the severed index finger of a black man. Naturally, all these odd clues confuse the hell out of everyone. But then the focus shifts to South Africa in the present day -- 1993, that is, with Nelson Mandella newly released from prison and President De Klerk pushing for free election that will certainly mean the end of apartheid -- and for the first time in the series, Wallender is no longer the P.O.V. character. It's a bit unsettling. Maybe half the book deals with events in Sweden, with the Inspector chasing a thoroughly nasty ex-KGB officer working for a group of highly-placed Boer conspirators. The other half is a largely political thriller (with a strong flavor of Forsyth's _Day of the Jackal_) set in Johannesburg and Pretoria. There's lots of fascinating stuff about South Africa, and Mankell (who, apparently between the last book and this one, moved to Mozambique) seems to know his stuff. And the characters he draws are chilling in their lack of concern for human life -- while Wallender, the cop, is pushed to the brink of a nervous breakdown when he has to shoot someone. Nevertheless, the book is structurally schizophrenic; I wonder if it shouldn't have been written as a completely separate and independent novel, outside the Wallender series. Still, it's generally an exciting and eye-opening yarn, even if it's not what one would expect.

This thriller, partly set in southern Sweden, partly in South Africa just after the freeing of Nelson Mandela in the waning days of apartheid, brings in everything but the kitchen sink. It starts with the small town policeman Wallander investigating the apparently senseless murder of a woman. His crew is drawn to an abandoned house, site of a mysterious explosion, where they find the severed finger of an African. Before we know it, we are drawn into a sinister assassination plot by Afrikaners to murder Mandela, using a black marksman, setting off a civil war during which extreme right-wing elements can take over South Africa. They decide to train the assassin in Sweden, using an evil ex-KGB racist as their instructor.

It's all too much. There are hints of "The Day of the Jackal" but little suspense (of course we know Mandela is not assassinated and will become president); there are also hints of "Gorky Park" but without any deep insight into the KGB and their workings.

One thing I find strange and unrealistic about this series is that vast crimes threatening the entire world always originate in Ystad, a small town of no particular significance in southern Sweden.

This book also offers a veritable bloodbath. Characters die one after another in horrific ways -- but the author gives little respect to their suffering.

I know this series has its fanatical fans -- but I guess I'm just not one of them. Reasonable people can agree to disagree. What others find fascinating, I found unconvincing, sadistic and unrealistic.

One of the things I look for when reading a translation, is the smoothness in which the characters move through the narrative parts of the novel. Laurie Thompson has done a superb job in this novel, especially because there are two diametrically dissimilar societies involved in the story; Sweden and Aparteid South Africa.

Mr. Mankell should be quite pleased with the way the book came out because the tension and subtlety of the story is there throughout the story. Unlike a lot of European Crime novels, those from the Scandinavian counties are not very procedurally involved. They tend to be more thoughtful and philosophical and will question the sociological aspects of the situation more than the criminal.

This story, which starts with a man reporting his wife missing, then the finding of the finger of a 'blackman' in an area where the woman might have disappeared, continues to grow in small pieces until we are able to see the whole. It is wonderfully written (and translated) and explains a lot about the society of Sweden as well as South Africa. The one weakness in the book is the "villian" who is very much a "stock" character and very one-dimensional.

The White Lioness is the third of the Kurt Wallender novels by Henning Mankell a Swedish detective author. Mankell also spends time in Maputo, Mozambique. This novel's locale is southern Sweden and South Africa which is well known territory to Mankell.
The plot is intricate and well conceived. On an ordinary day a Methodist woman is brutally murdered at a remote home in the Swedish countryside. Her name is Louise Akerblom the mother of two and a devout Christian mother. Her murder is difficult to solve until Kurt Wallender and his team take up the case.
The plot takes the reader to South Africa where a group of miltant Boers wants to plot the assassination of President De Klerk and Nelson Mandela who became the first black president of South Africa. Two Zulu assassains are sent to Sweden where they are to be taught weapon use by former KGB agent the infamous
Konovalenko. The South African opeation is headed by the wealthy Kleyn a white supremacist. We also learn Kleyn has a black child Mildred by his mistress Miranda. These two abused women hate the evil Kleyn.
Murder victims abound in this grisly atmospheric tale of cold Sweden and sweltering South Africa. During the novel, Kurt Wallender kills a criminal. This traumatic event in his life and the kidnapping of his grown daughter Linda motives him to ask for and recieve an indefinite leave of absence from the Ystand Police Department He longs for Baiba the widow from Riga whom he professes to love.
The White Lioness is first class police procedural fiction which will keep the fascinated reader turning pages with eagerness to love what exciting event will next occur. Highly recommended as are all the Mankell novels.

The book is interesting for its view of South African politics at the time of Mandela's release. The problem is the book pushes credulity to its limits. How Wallender gets involved in an international murder involving South Africa assassins, ex KGB agents and Swedish police seems stretched. The book might have been better as a stand-alone novel with Wallender not in the picture. Wallender is the most interesting character in these books, but his inner turmoil seems remote in this one. The book is still interesting. However, it is very long book and I found myself reading faster and faster until end. It is basically "The Day of the Jackal" plot with Wallender's daughter thrown in as a damsel in distress for good measure. "The Day of the Jackal" is a much better book. This book has its moments and I'll probably try more Wallender books.

Henning Mankell writes excellent mysteries, and this is no exception. The main character Kurt Wallender comes across as an authentic, flawed character who is all-too-human. Unlike the lone wolf Philip Marlowe in Chandler's books, Wallender is a detective who is also a divorced father, a son, and a man with middle-age challenges. Mankell does an excellent job of balancing the rational pursuit of evidence found in polic procedurals with Wallender's intuition. Moreover, while many of the events themselves are violent, Mankell avoids over-the-top graphic descriptions of violence, unlike some contemporary works (Lehane's Darkness, Take My Hand or Ellroy's Black Dahlia come to mind). This, along with other Mankell books like One Step Behind and Firewall, are excellent and entertaining reads.

The third book of Henning Mankell and his inspector Wallander. And again it is a great book to read. This time Wallander is confronted with a women who is shot without any apparent motive. From the beginning the reader knows what is going on: she was at the wrong time at the wrong place. The assassination of Nelson Mandela is prepared in Sweden and the woman has seen things that she was not supposed to see. Only after a long and complicated investigation Wallander and his colleagues can unravel all the ties and go after the villain, the ex-KGB man Konovalenko.

From the beginning the reader knows both sides of the story and sees the events through the eyes of all actors, but this book is still very exciting with numerous unexpected turns. There are a few chapers which are a bit boring, that is why I give this book 4 rather than 5 stars.

I have read all of the Wallender books in the order published and this is, to me, the watershed product in terms of differentiating Mankell from the hack writers. White Lioness is where I figured out his M.O.
They call his books "thrillers" but they're so much more than that. If you want fast-moving, action-packed stories then you've come to the wrong place. Wallender will spend page after page sitting at his kitchen table, thinking about the crime, thinking about Swedish politics, thinking about the cold war, thinking about his ex-wife, thinking about what his dead father would think of him today. And, believe it ot not, this is fascinating! He eventually sees the essential clue and solves the crime by deduction and. while he's at it. the reader learns volumes about apartheid, the cold war, Swedish politics and myriad personal and world-level problems.