FACELESS KILLERS HENNING MANKELL SERIES

Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of THE ISLAND by Ragnar Jónasson Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of THE ABSOLUTION by Yrsa Sigurđardóttir Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of RESIN by Ane Riel Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of MAIGRET HESITATES by Georges Simenon Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of THE MONGOLIAN CONSPIRACY by Rafael Bernal Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of GRAB A SNAKE BY THE TAIL by Leonardo Padura Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of THE DANCE OF DEATH by Oliver Bottini Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of A NEARLY NORMAL FAMILY by M. Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of THE REUNION by Guillaume Musso Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of AFTER SHE’S GONE by Camilla Grebe Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of THE ROCK BLASTER by Henning Mankell Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of MEXICO STREET by Simone Buchholz Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of LAZARUS by Lars Kepler

Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of VICTIM 2117 by Jussi Adler-Olsen He edits Crime Time (Read Barry Forshaw’s #RivetingReview of SISTER by Kjell Ola Dahl Other work: Death in a Cold Climate, Sex and Film and the British Crime Writing encyclopedia (also a Keating Award winner).

Murrayīarry Forshaw ’s books include Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide, the Keating Award-winning Brit Noir and Nordic Noir. In fact, it is a casually dropped observation by Wallander himself that throw suspicion on immigrants for the murder that launches the book – and although the detective passionately argues against fanning the flames of racism, he realises, in one of the very human moments that his creator frequently allows him, that there is, perhaps, a mote in his own eye in this regard. Faceless Killers, too, established the author’s readiness to take on his country’s fractious relationship with its then-undiscussed immigrant problem – and the non-assimilation of the incomers. But such was the richness of Wallander’s characterisation – a richness shared with characters in many a more prestigious ‘literary’ novel – that Mankell quickly achieved pole position in the crime-fiction genre. Readers quickly took to the taciturn, difficult protagonist – not in the best of health, impatient, uncomfortable with his superiors (the latter, of course, being de rigueur for literary coppers) and struggling to cope with a variety of family issues. The reviews for his first Kurt Wallander book, Faceless Killers (1991, appearing in the UK in 2000) were almost all favourable, remarking on a highly individual new voice in the genre, one whose writing had real heft and intelligence. But perhaps the ingredient that is most crucial to the celebrity of the books is the infusion of the writer’s own energetic social conscience, part and parcel of his desire to right the egregious wrongs of society, a conscience engendered – as with so many crime writers – from a 1960s left-wing perspective the writer’s political trajectory is in accord with many intellectuals born in the late 1940s. James, Mankell is frequently applauded for elevating the status of the once-disregarded crime novel into more rarefied realms.

FACELESS KILLERS HENNING MANKELL SERIES

The series of Detective Kurt Wallander books by the late Henning Mankell are notable for a variety of elements, apart from their sheer readability: their impeccable plotting and nuanced characterisation (the latter as adroit as anything in the crime-fiction genre), and their distinguished literary qualities.

Faceless killers henning mankell