book review - The White Lioness

This is the third book in the Kurt Wallander series by Swedish writer Henning Mankell. The first book Faceless Killers had a gripping story; tightness created by a rural Swedish geography and was a great read. The second book started to go a bit into the world of fantasy with Wallander fighting against Latvian corrupt police officers in Dogs of Riga.

The third again decides to stretch the horizon beyond Sweden. This time the target is South Africa and Mandela has just been released and political turmoil is expected. The story on paper works with Sweden being used as a training ground for an assassin that has been hired by white extremists to shoot Mandela. The problem is that the distance between the world of Wallander and the world of South African politics is too far.

As a result where the book works is when the story centres on Wallander and his battle with the KGB agent training the assassin in Sweden. The problem though is that this again starts to become fanciful and Wallander starts to break most of the rules and try to solve the crime in his own way with almost disastrous consequences.

There is nothing wrong with stretching imagination, after all isn’t that what fiction is all about, but when it comes to a police thriller you have to believe that what you are reading is possible. Whether it is Holmes, Morse or the other Swedish detective Martin Beck you want to believe that the actions of the hero are based broadly on truth. Here with guns going off, grenades being thrown into flats and bars and crazy Russians it is hard to stick with it.

Ultimately that was my problem. This was meant to be enjoyable but because it failed to make me believe in it then it started not to be enjoyable. Let’s not write the series off but for now I am going to take a break and head back towards some more established classic fiction.

Version read – Vintage paperback

The White Lioness - post VI

This has been a bit of a hangover from 2007 and so it is with some sense of relief that it has finally come to a conclusion.

The thriller ends with some bravery in style with Wallander the hero sliding into depression after solving an international crime. Part of the problem is that the crime was too big for the humble Swedish policeman and he never realised how much he did to foil a plot to kill Mandela.

This is an incredibly political book and although the message is a worthy one it does make that mistake of preaching sometimes. There is a postscript where Mankell makes the point that the period in South Africa before the first free elections was one of major insecurity. The problem is that reading this book now it is all a bit historic and we know what happened with Mandela so the sense of tension is lost slightly. The other problem is that towards the end there are a series of mistakes that are meant to add to the tension but after a while become slightly irritating.

I’m not sure if I would read the next book in the series. Maybe, but I’m going to take a break from this type of fiction for a while and head back to something old and something Russian.

A review will follow shortly…

The White Lioness - post V

The humble Swedish policeman gets his man and nails the ex-KGB agent ending his personal terror. The interesting move is that the terror is ended for Wallander with sixty odd pages to go until the story climaxes presumably taking the narrative back to South Africa.

The pace in these pages is impressive. But the problem is that the events are highly charged with emotion because Wallander’s daughter is involved. After her escape the detective actually uses some of his skills to track down the Russian killer but there is far too much jumping around without much Holmes type detection to back it all up.

As you might be able to tell this book has not been quite the experience I expected and following this you are tempted to drink down some Dostoyevsky as some sort of classical remedy.

Last chunk should come tomorrow…

The White Lioness - post IV

This book is something I had planned to get through last year but it has dragged on a bit. It has quickly come down to a simple chase between two men to be the first to kill the other. On the side of good is Kurt Wallander and facing the policeman is the crazed ex-KGB officer who shoots in the back of the head for fun.

The political story line about an assassination of Nelson Mandela continues to rumble on in the background but this is more about the cat and mouse game in Sweden. Maybe it would have been better if it had simply stayed that way and limited the horizon rather than to try and make it some sort of international thriller. The story would have felt more believable and the Swedish landscape given more of a chance to feature.

Still there is enough pace about the writing to make you want to find out about what Wallander does next and by page 400 his daughter has been taken hostage. Maybe his father will start to show more respect for his policeman son if he can solve this crime?

More tomorrow…

The White Lioness - post III

There is no way of writing this without sounding like a snob but one of the books that I have always avoided has been the cheap airport novel. They tend to get chosen without much thought, after all the flight is usually waiting, and then get consumed quickly and are forgotten just as fast. The mistake with Henning Mankell might have been that just because Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo wrote a crime novel so intelligently that the same standard would be replicated elsewhere.

No doubt some people would have no problem with this stuff but it seems a waste of time that could have been spent reading something else.

Where I have a problem is that this is just too fantastical. The story centres on the conspiracy a bunch of white fundamentalists have to kill Mandela. Sweden comes into the equation because it is seen as a far away enough place to be a training ground to prepare the killer. The first assassin is the one who loses a finger while his KGB trainer flips out and shoots an estate agent. That is the reason why Wallander gets involved. But as the story drifts between the conspiracy in South Africa and the events in the ground in Sweden you start to lose faith in it all slightly. Just as with Dogs of Riga this is the stuff of fancy, or at least it feels like it. For me personally that is undermining the experience of reading this thriller.

As the Murder in the Rue Morgue showed the story might sound unbelievable but if the description and the explanation is credible enough then the reader will go along with it. More of those feelings would help here.

More tomorrow…

The White Lioness - post II

Once it becomes clear that this story involves South African politics being honest the heart sinks as you start to brace yourself for a repeat of Dogs of Riga. It also starts to become clear that this is a crime writer that allows himself to surf a wave of fiction rather than base the story in the nitty gritty of the police station.

So there is an introduction in the second part to an assassin who is taken on to kill Mandela but assumes that he has been hired to kill de Klerk the leader that has been identified as letting down the whites.

As part of the preparation for the killing the killer is flown to Russia to meet with an ex KGB contact to get trained and then they both move to Sweden to hide out in a safe house. The problem is that the house they choose is discovered by a lost estate agent who is rewarded with a billet in the head after she asks directions.

The killing of the woman disgusts the hired killer and he decides to kill the KGB agent but fails, loses his finger and then is on the run in Stockholm. As the KGB man chases him down another police officer is shot after a bank robbery and a shop assistant dies of a heart attack after being robbed at gun point.

The second section is interesting not only because it moves around locations but also because the name Wallander is absent. No doubt he will reappear to pick up the threads of the case. In the meantime I’ll stick with it but if it becomes more fantastical then the prospect of reading more in the Wallander series is becoming less attractive.

More tomorrow…

The White Lioness - post I

Henning Mankell is not afraid to use his books as viechles to make political statements. The Dogs of Riga was about drug running across the shattered borders of the former Soviet Union and here there is a SOuth African element.

But Mankell is also clever and does not introduce the political theme from the start preferring to grab you with a pulsating story about the dissapearance of an estate agent. The loveable woman who appeared to have no enemies goes out looking for a house to view but ends up knocking on the wrong door. She is then greeted at gun point by a mystery man. The story then shifts to the main character Kurt Wallander starting the search for a missing person. The search is going nowhere until they widen the geographical area and the house the esate agent last visited suddenly explodes, her car is found in a pond and eventually a petty thief stealing a water hose finds her body in a well.

Along with those dicsoveries there is also a black man's finger, the butt of a South African pistol and some satellite equipment to add to the mystery. Part one ends with a murder, victim, location of crime but no apprent motive or hint at the identity of the killer.

More tomorrow...

book review - The Dogs of Riga

After the Faceless Killers, a tight and focused book that introduces the world of Kurt Wallander, you hit Dogs of Riga with high expectations. Initially Henning Mankell starts delivering straight from the off with a couple of dead men drifting ashore in a life raft.

But after that things start to go wrong and the focus of the story moves to Latvia. The reason for the involvement of the Latvian police is the suspicion that the dead men came from there and the case seems to be closed after a police officer from Riga travels over and then heads home having taken responsibility for the case.

Then there is a lull when it looks like the dead men in the raft might have been a red herring before Wallander is heading over to Riga to assist in the murder investigation of the policeman who visited to work on the case.

Once in Riga the firm foundations of the Swedish landscape are replaced by broader strokes and it becomes slightly harder to believe the story. Okay so this is fiction but the police procedural genre is based largely in the reality of police work and this quickly starts to emulate something of a James Bond novel.

Things get even stranger when Wallander realises that there are secret organisations and powers at work in Riga that the murdered police officer got caught up in. His widow becomes the main contact, and a love interest for Wallander, and he promises her after he is sent home after the murder case is conveniently solved, that he will return.

His second trip to Riga is a spy thriller with bullets flying, shady figures following his every step and the two police officers in charge of Riga both being under suspicion of ordering the murder of their colleague. Wallander has to work out which is guilty and gets it wrong only to be saved by his enemy’s enemy in a roof top shoot-out.

He heads home without anyone aware of what he has been doing when he was meant to be skiing in the Alps. He also heads back without the widow who he has fallen in love with despite asking her to return with him.

It reminds you of the Patrick O’Brien novels where he always seems to be happier writing when the action is at sea and it feels a bit awkward and forced when the story is on land. The same happens here with Mankell leaving Sweden to head for Latvia.

But in his defence the point that could be made, and one in fact that is explained slightly in Mankell’s postscript is that this is a book trying to make a statement about the times and the climate in the immediate collapse of Soviet rule. That makes is different from the run of thrillers and does show an awareness that Mankell wants to make a point about the wider world but it is a risky ambition that doesn’t always come off in The Dogs of Riga.

Still it will not put me off reading more of the Wallander books and the next stop is the third in the series The White Lioness.

Version read – Vintage paperback

book review - Faceless Killers

The first two chapters of the first in the ten book series of Kurt Wallander novels by Henning Mankell grabs you and sucks you into a story with a force that rarely lessens throughout the entire book.

“’What are you doing?” she says, and he can tell that she’s annoyed.
As he replies, he feels sure. The terror is real.
‘The mare isn’t whinnying,” he says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. ‘And the Lovgrens’ kitchen window is wide open. And someone is shouting.’
She sits up in bed.
‘What did you say?’
He doesn’t want to answer, but now he’s sure it wasn’t a bird that he heard.
‘It’s Johannes or Maria,’ he says. ‘One of them is calling for help.’
She gets out of bed and goes over to the window. Big and wide, she stands there in her white nightgown and looks out in the dark.
‘The kitchen window isn’t open,’ she whispers. ‘It’s smashed.’”

Important throughout the book is the landscape and the weather so on one of the first couple of pages there is a map of the local area with the main towns and an idea of the location of the landmarks that start to get mentioned in the book. Most of the time there is a threat of snow that keeps the main character Kurt Wallander occupied as it seems to be a barometer for his mood and health.

But what keeps this story going is not just the brutal murder of two old people who lived on a farm but the fact that there does not seem to be a motive for it. The police are left scrambling in the dark and because Wallander’s boss is on holiday he gets to pick up the case and the responsibility for managing the team of policemen who he deploys to try and discover what happened to the old couple.

Along with the case unfolding, which it does painfully slowly, there is plenty of opportunity to introduce Wallander. He is a divorced father of one, a 19-year-old girl Linda who he has never really managed to get close to since he discovered her trying to commit suicide when she was 15. His wife has left him not for another man but because life with him was unbearable and his father is on the brink of going senile and for some reason hates the fact his son became a policeman.

Wallander is in his early forties, likes classical music and a drink and has an eye for women of a particular type. He has the instincts needed to crack crimes but more importantly the dogged determination not to let them go. His is ably abetted by his colleague Rydberg but he has cancer and by the end of the book is on his way out of the picture. Other policemen come and go but the burden of solving the case falls on Wallander’s shoulders.

Where this works so well is that Mankell introduces a second crime to not only keep boredom from the door but also demonstrate just how successful Wallander is with a race hate murder involving an ex-Policeman.

All of the police procedures are here with the pain and annoyance of press conferences, the battles with the prosecutor to get warrants and arrests. It makes it clear the frustration with not only trying to find a couple of unknown killers but also how it can become a bogged down process just filling in the paperwork.

The final section of any thriller has to get you galloping through the pages breathless as the final page comes. This does get you going with the breakthrough in the case coming months after everyone else has given up. When they do manage to get the men the sense of relief and the story all falling into place is evident for Wallander who has by that time managed to at least comes to terms with his divorce and father’s decline in health.

Of course a test of any good thriller, particularly one that is the first of a ten part series is whether or not you would read anymore.

Just try stopping me…

Version read – Vintage paperback

The Dogs of Riga - post III

Although this is a great read it differs from the first book that had the feeling of being a police procedural type thriller into something that is more akin to James Bond. The thing that keeps you going is Wallander who despite the increasing implausibility you still belief in as a character.

Wallander having left Riga with the case apparently closed has made a promise to return to help solve the crime of the murdered police captain who came to Sweden to solve the mystery of the two dead drug dealers from all those weeks before.

His return to Riga to help solve the mystery of which police boss ordered the killing of the Latvian police officer who had come to Sweden involves meeting mystery people and heading across borders in the dark. Once back in Latvia he is introduced to a group working with the dead policeman’s widow but before they can become acquainted the police burst in and kill everyone except Wallander.

Without guides and support he has to resort to survival mode and steals a car and then reintroduces himself with a woman selling postcards at the hotel who was a previous point of contact on his visit to Riga. She hooks him up with the widow and they search for the testament of the dead policeman who will expose the corruption in the police force and name the superior officer guilty of crimes and inadvertently his own murder.

The pace steps up a gear and there is a final showdown with Wallander getting it wrong but being saved by the principle that everyone’s enemy has an enemy. Once the details of the case are closed Wallander asks the widow to come back with him to Sweden because he has fallen in love with her. But he travels home alone.

There is an authors note at the end of the book that Markell uses to point out that it is very difficult not only setting a book in an alien environment but also hard to set it against a political background that is changing rapidly. The fact that he tried to bother at all is obviously the result of something that drove him on.

A review will follow soon…

The Dogs of Riga - post II

There is always a danger with mixing politics with a thriller that it will get in the way as it has to be explained to the reader which distracts from the chase to catch the killers. Although it doesn’t get too bogged down in Eastern European post USSR politics it does slow things up. There is also a feeling that because the main character is in unknown surroundings it is also a limited horizon compared to the darting about he does with confidence back in Sweden.

The other problem with going on about a specific point in the history of the disintegration of the former Soviet Union is that it does feel rather dated. Sure the same problems still exist in terms of drugs being smuggled across borders and corruption but if you mention Riga to most people now the image that comes to mind is a location for stag parties rather than a dark, cold and mysterious location that is gripped by subterfuge and political tension.

As the shift from police based thriller to something more akin to a spy novel it leaves Wallander wandering and driving round Riga trying to avoid the people following him and trying to work out why the friends of the dead Latvian policeman he has come to help insist on such secrecy. After some coming and going with the wife of the dead policeman and her friends Wallander decides that the murdered policeman was onto a consipracy that involved one or both of his superiors.

But with one of the friends of the murder victim fitted up for the crime the time of Wallander's official visit comes to an end and he promises to return as a tourist and help them solve the mystery.

At this point credibility is being stretched to breaking point but it should be fun seeing just how Wallander blows the lid on the conspiracy.

More tomorrow...

The Dogs of Riga - post I

A few of the questions that you are left with at the end of the first book are answered reasonably quickly with Wallander’s colleague dying of cancer and his personal life bedding down into a position of phoning his father on a daily basis and wondering if his daughter is happy.

Back at work a phone call that tips off the police that a life raft with two dead bodies inside is going to wash up on a local beach is all that disturbs Wallander on a night the snow comes in.

The boat has been discovered by fishermen and towed near to the shore before they cut it adrift not wanting to get involved with the police. The two men are embracing each other wearing expensive suits and when they do wash up on the beach the police are called in. Wallander keeps wondering what his old colleague Rydberg would have done but without his friend, who died of cancer in between books one and two, he has to try and struggle on alone.

The case does not seem to be easy and when it emerges that the victims are from Eastern Europe the hope is that the Swedish police can wash their hands of the whole thing. That wish seems to come true after the Foreign Office gets involved and it is established that the men originated from Riga and are known criminals to the Latvian Police.

A Latvian police officer is sent over to help with the investigation and he manages to explain that his country is dominated by drugs and gangs and these men were involved with both. He heads back to Riga with the coffins and documents from the Swedish police handing the responsibility back to the Latvian police.

But the policeman turns up dead hours later and Wallander is sent over to throw any light on the last investigation he was involved with.

This is a slow burner and a clever approach because you get a sense that Wallander and his men do not want the case and as a result their emotional involvement is not as great as it might have been. But with the case coming back to haunt Wallander and a trip to unknown and unfamiliar Riga in store the thriller changes gear.

More tomorrow...

Faceless Killers - post III

The plan was to do a review of Norman Mailer’s Castle in the Forest but the room where the computer lives has lost its heating and it is about three degrees so the idea of sitting here tapping away is not appealing.

But it seemed like a good idea to try and match the pace of Mankell and wrap up my thoughts on reading Faceless Killers. He manages to move things forward at a much quicker pace in the last section of the book. After progress being so slow that the case looks as if it night never be solved the months roll by and things seem to be going nowhere. You keep one eye on the page numbers and wonder how things are going to get resolved in the last thirty pages.

When it came to keeping things almost painfully slow then a breathless climax Mal Sjowall and Per Wahloo did it better in Roseanna and the reason is that this seems to go almost too quickly. The balance of the book is off kilter and the pace should have been upped a bit earlier.

It is enjoyable reading through the final pages watching Wallander solve the crime but things are going by a bit too fast and you finish the book with a load of questions about where Wallander is going in his personal life, whether or not his loyal colleague dies of cancer and what becomes of his relationship with the prosecutor.

No doubt that is all deliberately done to get you to do exactly what I will be from tomorrow – picking up the next book in the series The Dogs of Riga.

A review will follow after Castle in the Forest and A Hero’s Daughter…

Faceless Killers - post II

Although there are plenty of character flaws with the main character Kurt Wallander you stick with it because you want to see how he solves the crime. As a person he is losing on almost every front on his personal life but as a policeman he retains a gift of insight that is capable of solving crimes others are scrambling in the dark over.

Although the double murder of the old couple in the farm remains unsolved attention switches to a racist attack that leaves a Somalian dead after he is shot in the face. A former policeman reports that it was his car that might have been used for the crime because it is missing but Wallander tumbles that he is in fact the murderer. He risks his life to prove it and they do manage to wrap up the case before any of the other refugees are killed.

Meanwhile Wallander has a terrible meeting with his wife, his father is going senile and he gets too carried away and tries to get physical with the chief prosecutor in a way that borders not far off assault. He is also caught drink driving by some colleagues who allow it to go unreported.

Morale in the police is low with the double farm murder remaining unsolved and Wallander is constantly looking for a breakthrough and starts to focus on tracking down the mistress of the murdered farmer without any luck.

The weather starts to play an increasing role with Wallander trying to fight off a cold and wishing the snow would stay away. You sense the cold, the loneliness of being newly separated and the desperation of wanting to close the case. In the meantime those who depend on him outside of the police station get forgotten and suffer from a lack of attention.

You might not be a total fan of Wallander but you want him to succeed and it hard to put down the book when the remaining pages hold the key to the story.

Final chunk tomorrow…

Faceless Killers - post II

The similarity between Mankell and Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo is the commitment to detail police procedure down to a level that sometimes seems unnecessary but as a result it makes the story so much more believable.

It is also clearly set in a period of flux. In some respects Wallander is in the same position as Sheriff Bell in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. Both characters are starting to question their ability to fight off drug related crime and cope in a world where the respect for the law is almost non existent.

“Rydberg gave him a sceptical look. Then he stood up to go. He paused at the door.
‘The daughter that I talked to, the one from Canada, had her husband with her. The Mountie. He wondered why we don’t carry guns. ‘
‘In a few years we probably will,’ said Wallander.”

The problems for the detective in a case without almost any clues is that the last words the dying woman says who becomes the second murder victim is that those responsible were foreigners.

That puts the spotlight on the nearby refugee asylum and various nutters come out of the woodwork threatening to stir up race hatred. The book is set in 1990 but the themes resonate 17 years later because ultimately the breakdown of the law is not something that happens overnight.

The case begins to unravel with the brother of the murdered woman revealing that the landowner was indeed rich and had made money out of collaborating with the Nazi's and kept his fortune, along with a mistress and a son, hidden from his wife. A bank search reveals that the story appears to be true but there is no sign of the mistress.

Meanwhile on the relationship front Wallander finally gets in touch with his wife but is hostile, forgets to visit his father and has no idea what his daughter is up to.

Faceless Killers - post I

This might seem like an odd thing to write but after an experience like Castle in the Forest you want something to read that is relaxing and for me a thriller always fits the bill. After enjoying Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo it seemed like a good idea to head back to the Nordics for another tale of murder and police procedure.

Henning Mankell is famous for creating Kurt Wallander – a detective who is recently divorced, estranged from his daughter and almost facing a breakdown in relations with his father. On top of that there are moments when you get an insight into his state of health and his taste in classical music.

If there is one feature of a good thriller it should be that no matter how slow the action appears to be there should be some sense of a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. Here there is the bonus of one on almost every other page as the scene is set as an elderly farmer wakes up in the early hours of a cold January morning to look out of his window and realise that something is wrong over at his neighbours.

He tells his wife and then goes over to discover his neighbours in a horrific state with the husband butchered and the wife clinging on tied up with a noose around her neck.

The police are called and Wallander comes to investigate and has his stomach turned by what he sees in the house. The problem is they have no leads to go on. The surviving woman is rushed to hospital and Wallander keeps his fingers crossed she survives.

In the course of the following day some more of the detective’s back-story is filled in with his daughter Linda phoning up but then disappearing again. Wallander is also nagged by his father to visit.

In terms of the case some work is done on house-to-house but no one seems to know anything. The hope is that the old woman will survive and tell her story.

She dies and Wallander is called back to the station to be told by a colleague what she said in her last ten minutes.

More tomorrow…