The Fifth Woman (A Kurt Wallander Mystery) (Paperback)

by Henning Mankell (Author), Steven T. Murray (Translator)
Key Phrases: pungee pit, sharpened bamboo stakes, tractor path, Holger Eriksson, Katarina Taxell, Harald Berggren (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
At the start of this Swedish version of the station-house police procedural, set in the Sk?ne district in the south of Sweden, Det. Kurt Wallander, who has just returned from an idyllic vacation in Rome, joins the hunt for the missing Holger Eriksson, an elderly poet. Finding the man's corpse in a ditch, impaled on sharpened bamboo stakes, brings Wallander back abruptly to the realities of crime in modern Sweden. While Wallander and his colleagues investigate the murder, another man is found dead in the local woods, making it clear that they have a brutal serial killer on their hands. The killer plans each murder carefully to ensure that the victim suffers for several days before dying. Who could hate these innocent-seeming men so much as to want to torture them to death? The police detectives must delve deeply into the victims' lives to find out what links them together and what might have made them a deadly enemy. Mankell takes the reader slowly and meticulously through the long investigation's progress, including frequent reversals. The policemen are constantly overworked and exhausted, but they make acute deductions and chase down every lead relentlessly. Mankell is a talented writer, and the translation by Steven Murray is graceful and colloquial, but the narrative is so bleak and brooding that it certainly qualifies as the darkest of Swedish noir. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
The fourth book in Mankell's excellent series opens with the bloody killings of four nuns and a Swedish tourist (the fifth woman) in Algeria, then switches to the carefully staged murder of a wealthy retired car dealer in Ystad, Sweden. Even as Inspector Kurt Wallander and his cohorts tirelessly work the car-dealer case, the perpetrator obsessively plots her next murder, dispatching the victim as if all her life were meant for this killing moment. Wallander somehow uncovers the ties that bind these apparently disparate events together. The intricate plotting, chilling psychological divination, and thrilling police procedural are all seamlessly translated. Fans of Maj Sj wall and Per Wahl 's mysteries will enjoy this crime novel by their fellow countryman. Highly recommended.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (April 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400031540
• ISBN-13: 978-1400031542
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,613 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping thriller with melancholy atmosphere, September 5, 2000

By	Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Fifth Woman: A Kurt Wallander Mystery (Hardcover)

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.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very different type but just as enjoyable police novel, July 1, 2000

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Fifth Woman: A Kurt Wallander Mystery (Hardcover)

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

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worthy Successor to Sjowall and Wahloo., September 17, 2001

By	"jvmeadows" (Lynnwood, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fifth Woman: A Kurt Wallander Mystery (Hardcover)

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.