Book Review of Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
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Book Blurb
It could be said that as a policeman, Kurt Wallander, Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell‘s award winning creation, isn’t much of a cop. He eschews the meticulous and the scientific in favour of his hunches, which all too often lead up blind alleys. He drinks too much, then drives. He doesn’t get enough sleep. And to cap it all, his wife has left him and his daughter doesn’t speak to him.
Faceless Killers is the first of the acclaimed Wallander novels. Set in January 1990, in a frozen landscape and against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Europe, this is a bleak novel that deals with the thorny issues of immigration and racial hatred. Wallander investigates a brutal double murder at a remote farmhouse in which the only possible clues are the whispered words of a dying woman and a freshly fed horse. When this limited evidence and its implications leak to the press it stirs right-wing activists into action.
Book Details
Format: Kindle Edition
Print Length: 306 pages
ASIN: B0038AUYV4
Genre: Crime thriller
Cover via Amazon
My Review
This is the first Kurt Wallander crime thriller. Kurt is a typically flawed cop that is frequently portrayed in detective mystery novels.
One brutal crime leads to another, there are many false leads which are followed to their ultimate dead ends. The crimes are all eventually sewn up and solved but I found there to be something missing.
The final solution of the original crime wa arrived at almost by accident. The plot seemed to get more and more far-fetched as it progressed and not all the loose ends were tightly tied off.
It is a good read and will keep you turning the pages but you will need to be very broad-minded to get over some of the improbabilities.
There were a few mistakes which crept through the proofreading process but nothing too invasive or distracting.
My rating for this book is 3.5/5 rounded up to a 4.
Give it a try, it is enjoyable, but don’t expect perfection.
