Faceless Killers

"There is no such thing as the face of a murderer"

"Justice is the pursuit of truth without end."

A solid start to the series. I was a little disappointed by the major drops in intensity. The mystery was sometimes lost in Mankell's realism, earning him the genre name of "police procedural" more than anything else. The thorough characterization of Wallander prepares him to be reused for story after story. I love this curmudgeony cop and will gladly return to the series. The Swedish politics around immigration is the pet topic of the book. And the author is forgiven of his "conservative" stance due to him nodding toward neutrality or multiple perspectives. His opinion was a bit on the nose sometimes. An enjoyable read, I hope the next book is a more intricate/thrilling mystery.

This is the first book of a series, so maybe they get better, but it wasn't great. The writing is very lazy. There's single sentences that cover things I wanted to know more about, and entire paragraphs where a word or two would've sufficed. There's a lot of casual racism and sexism throughout, which the reader is supposed to understand as problematic, but Wallander often seems to thinks to himself "Huh, that person is racist and/or sexist, but I'd rather not call them out right now." Perhaps the most interesting thing about the book is Wallander's own problems with women and minorities, which as a character he seems to recognize and want to address, but the structure around it isn't good enough to make that meaningful or interesting.

Great first book with Kurt Wallander – already read them but it's great to read this great story again :)

I enjoyed the methodical investigation and flawed characters. And it was interesting to get insight into racial tensions in Sweden over refugees. I'll definitely check out other books by the author.

decent story, very grindy on the procedural. thin characters.

I have recently started to watch the BBC version of Wallander so decided it would be worth reading a few. A little patchy in places - I guess its a feature of the first novel, but I enjoyed it and the tangled nature of the plotting. Plenty going on and Wallander himself is an interesting creation.

Looking forward to more.

Sporadically interesting but very plodding Swedish mystery. Plenty of red herrings but the book moved at a snail's pace. Still, I'm interested in trying the next one in the Wallendar series.

Encore une découverte pour moi avec cet auteur suédois. Il s’agit de la première enquête de Kurt Wallander. Très ancrée dans la société ce roman traite notamment de son ascension vers la violence. L’intrigue est bien ficelée, même si la fin tombe un peu à plat à mon goût. Elle reste tout de même bien menée et le personnage de Wallander est particulièrement attachant. Ce qui frappe dans ce roman c’est l’humanité des personnages. Wallander est un policier dont la vie privée catastrophique ne nous est pas épargnée. On le découvre “comme tout le monde”, avec ses faiblesses, ses doutes et ses problèmes. On découvre aussi une facette de la société suédoise, teintée de pessimisme et de réalisme. Un auteur que je vais sans doute suivre.