Funnily enough out of all the books in this list the ones I really look forward to are the thriller/mysterious (go figure if I told you this three years ago!) mainly because I want to solve them ( I haven’t yet dammit), However Mankell’s mysterious are a bit different.
So far all the mysteries that I f read in the list follow the same format. We are presented with a mystery, some suspects a couple of clues and then it’s left for the detective to single out his suspect. What Mankell does, at least in Faceless Killers, present his mystery, no suspects and it is up to the reader to figure out how the crime was committed, rather than who performed the act. I found it interesting.
The plot itself is simple, Inspector Kurt Wallander has to track down the double murder of a farming couple and a couple of unprovoked attacks on foreigners. Eventually all the clues that are left behind help Wallander capture the killer. Wallander himself cannot handle his domestic life as well as his working one so we get to see how he copes with his divorce, senile father and bad eating habits.
Mankell doesn’t stop there though. Through Wallander we see a portrait of Sweden, one that breeding a generation of inefficient people lacking moral fibre and with xenophobic tendencies. Something Wallander also finds difficult to grasp.
On the whole I enjoyed Faceless Killers. I didn’t love it as there have been better mysteries on the list ( Volpi’s In Search of Klingsor and Perez-Reverte’s The Dumas Club) but it was good solid read.
The Bobsphere 