Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell


Henning Mankell's (Swede crime fiction writer) excellent first Kurt Wallander Mystery is called Faceless Killers & is quite excellent in all facets.

It was more like well written literature than murders and mayhem. I know this will not be my last Mankell. Maybe a routine is brewing & I will read all of them. It was practically poetic in its attention to details while also it served up a dose of believable gritty realism as the main character dealt with a malingering divorce, a vagabond, once suicidal daughter, a half crazed father, who was also a famous oil painter, with fits of dementia, and his general health in decline as he confronted a bevy of strange, often disturbing, murders. In this novel, an elderly couple has been tortured to death in their own isolated farmhouse & "foreigners" were to blame. Foreigners seeking asylum from the Soviet Union & Eastern Bloc countries was a major issue in Sweden in 1990 when this was written. Locals were enraged with the government acceptance of so many refugees. In some locations, they actually stormed the immigrant holding centers & committed not only vandalism but violence when they could. The fear was that the wife's dying word of her killers being "foreign" would unleash dangerous repercussions country wide. Wallander, on the sly, just to himself, disliked the mostly Polish asylum seekers. There were enough twists & blind alleys in this story to keep a reader guessing up until the end. In fact, they kept my interest excitingly stimulated throughout.

The weather was a critical character as important as the crime itself. As the mystery unfolded and took various incorrect turns, the weather was there, worsening while Wallander worried about it as much as in solving the double murders themselves. This actually helped me in my own writing. At the present, I am stuck in air-conditioning with heat index days pushing past 110 degrees most everyday while I write about a cold June in Portland, Oregon.

In the end, after the pages were finished & the book went to rest in a special bookshelf in my studio, I found myself a tad bit depressed for a couple days. It seems I was missing the story. I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt that way before. To solve that dilemma, I have already purchased the next book in the series.


Book finished: July 5, 2010

Review completed: July 15, 2010