2001 in the UK, but 1995 in Sweden; the first translated winner, and I think the first from outwith the US or UK. Plenty more of those to come. The fifth in Mankell’s much-loved Wallander series, a chunky 500 pages in paperback but a pretty zippy read for all that.
There’s a serial killer on the loose in Wallander’s home region of Skåne, knocking off men in particularly gruesome style, with no obvious link to be drawn between the victims. He’s clearly bad, he’s clearly mad: how many more skulls will he split and scalp before the police find the connection and the killer? Oh, and there’s this girl who’s burned herself to death in a field. Seems to be no association between her and the rest, but what do you know.
Now, I have my reservations about crazy serial killer plots. There’s just not much you can say about motive, and that encourages too much dwelling on method instead. I also have my reservations about how-catch-em plot structures, and this is one of those: we learn fairly early on who the killer is, and much of the tension in the remainder of the book is generated by the way in which Wallander and his crew slowly, patiently crawl up blind allies as the killer makes ready to do his thing again. In fact, I thought for a while that Mankell had pretty much killed any tension. It seems that we know not only who the killer is, but also how the story will climax, about 200 pages from the end; a denouement seems fairly clearly telegraphed. This turns out to be a red herring. I can’t decide if this is a neat trick or a Pyrrhic one: is it a still a good idea to surprise the reader if the setup requires you to bore them slightly for 150 pages?
These reservations aside, it’s a good read. The plot around the killer and the victims elaborates, twists and turns. Turns out those dead men were pretty horrible. Turns out their horribleness has something to do with the dead field girl. All predictable enough, but done very well, written (and translated) in decent prose, well paced and structured.
Having spent six years in Sweden, I did appreciate a few of things more than I might have done. There’s a theme throughout of police complaining about how this serial killer investigation is going to ruin their summer holiday plans, which is a hilariously Swedish preoccupation. There’s also something quintessentially Swedish about how the police do their work: diligent, dogged, low-fuss, methodical. It’s only against this background that Wallander can seem at all unconventional or erratic. I don’t quite get the affection for Wallander, who seems something of a cipher of a character rather than a well-rounded person one could grow accustomed to. There’s barely even the usual collection of delineating tics or habits, aside from occasionally playing opera tapes (1995!) and often musing gloomily on aging. So, yes, not sure quite why Wallander himself is much-loved, but easy to see why the books are.