Wonderful Reading For A Cold Winter Night

books:


	• The Man Who Smiled (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) Henning Mankell Vintage, 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great Swedish mileau; silly ending.

After 2 Mankell novels, I'm wondering about Swedish "style" of good mysteries. The climax of "The Man Who Smiled" is so silly, after a very interesting book--so far--asks the reader to practice suspending disbelief to the max. Kurt Wallander, the cop, discovers his agent dead, has every reason to call the cop waiting outside the walls of the estate and tell her to send for extra police help, but chooses to lie to her, repeatedly, time after time. The "reason" for this is so weak, it's laughable. Inside the castle, he sits talking with the ultimate bad guy with the radio and a gun in his pocket, continues to contact the other detective and say nothing other than, "Everything's okay." No gun to his head, no threat at all, just advice to cooperate. And his brilliant co-hort outside seems to think it's just dandy that he stays inside the whole night--til dawn. Just bizarre. Then he's being led to a helicopter to be discarded from high up and his solution is to throw concrete pieces at the rotor. Later, at the airport (he has hooked up with the female detective, but has called only the local chief, who doesn't want publicity!) he draws his gun. Toooo much! Surely Mr. Mankell can think of a more logical way out of that problem. 4 stars for the body of the book; 0 for the climax chapters.

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Wonderful Reading For A Cold Winter Night

At the beginning of THE MAN WHO SMILED, another of Henning Mankell's brilliant Kurt Wallander mysteries, the Swedish detective is on leave from the Ystad Police Force and is contemplating resigning because of remorse over having killed someone in self-defense. Full of self-pity and angst, he is as dark and gloomy as a cold Swedish winter night. He has even stopped listening to his beloved operas. A visit from Sten Tortensson, an attorney he has known professionally, urging Wallander to investigate the so-called accidental death of his father Gustaf, another attorney, on a lonely foggy road, however, gets him back on track, especially when the younger Tortensson, is murdered shortly after his visit to Wallander.

The detective is a real fleshed-out human being with doubts and fears and character flaws. He doesn't get along very well with his aging father, a "kitsch" artist, who paints the same autumn landscape over and over "with or without a grouse in the foreground." On the other hand, Wallander is very helpful and gives good advice and counsel to a new female recruit on the police force, when another jealous officer attempts to do her in. As always, he does not always tell his superiors all he knows about the case, bends the rules when it is to his advantage and is, without actually lying, "economical with the truth." Methodical to a fault, he ultimately by his diligence solves the crime.

Mr. Mankell through Wallander always gives the reader a kernel or two of truths worth remembering. Wallander on his father's mediorce art that he had seen hanging in many apartments in Sweden, pictures of a landscape where the sun never set: "For the first time he thought he had gained an insight. Throughout his life his father hade prevented the sun from setting. that had been his livelihood, his message. He had painted pictures so that people who bought them to hang on their walls could see it was possible to hold the sun captive." Another of Wallander's insights into his father that has universal implications: when his father makes a comment about dying, he remembers that he has never heard his father refer to either his age or his death and sees, sadly, that he has no idea who his father is or how he thinks, a situation so many of us understand too clearly. Finally, on a more hopeful note, Wallander says that every friendship is a miracle. We get all this in addition to a fine crime story.

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A prodigious talent continues...

Although this is the fourth book in the Inspector Wallander series (that now numbers nine, I believe), it is the most recent to be translated and published in English. I'm not sure why it was withheld but I think I can guess. In this book, the dour Swedish Inspector Wallander has suffered a fairly complete and debilitating breakdown after having shot and killed a murderer in the line of duty and in self-defense. Perhaps it was thought that American and English readers wouldn't resonate with such a complete breakdown in character over something that we accept as a fact of police life. In truth, most police officers have never fired their guns in self-defense and, like most people, would recoil at the thought of taking a life. But a greater truth in this book may be that the killing was the crystallizing event in a life that was already off the rails. There is no joy in watching Wallander hit bottom and, after more than a year in increasingly disability, no surprise that he will quit the police force and probably drink himself to death. But redemption comes in a very small package. A man seeks him out to ask Wallander to look into the death of his father, a death that has taken place in the first pages of the book and has been called accidental. When the son is killed, the accidental death comes into question and Wallander has his first stirring of a life and purpose outside his own self-destruction.

From this beginning, we follow parallel stories as a totally fragile Wallander tries to rebuild his professional relationships at the same time as he tries to regain his life. As trust is reestablished in fits and starts and the facts of the potential murders are teased into meaning, we meet a man who is the complete antithesis of Wallander: an industrialist named Harderburg, aka "The Man Who Smiled". We assume without being told that this man could mow down anyone who stood in his way and still get a good night's sleep. But is he a killer? Wallander must take great personal and professional chances to figure out the answer.

It is hard for me to sufficiently express my appreciation for the storytelling of Henning Mankell. I smile a little when I think of how I didn't really care for his writing so very much when I first started reading him. The simple, declarative sentences don't necessarily flow like some of our more prosaic writers but behind the slightly awkward structure (to English ears) is a powerful conscience and social commentator who also tells a whopping good story. Mention should also be made of the skill of the translator, Laurie Thompson, who retained so many important nuances.

This may be the best book in the brilliant Wallander series. For my money, The Return of the Dancing Master is his very best book and it is a standalone, whose main character, Stefan Lindeman, joins the Wallander series in Before the Frost.

P.S. I just found out this past year that Henning Mankell is the son-in-law of the late Ingmar Bergman. I guess talent attracts talent!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

After killing a man in the line of duty, Kurt Wallander resolves to quit the Ystad police. However, a bizarre case gets under his skin.

A lawyer driving home at night stops to investigate an effigy sitting in a chair in the middle of the highway. The lawyer is hit over the head and dies. Within a week the lawyer’s son is also killed. These deeply puzzling mysteries compel Wallander to remain on the force. The prime suspect is a powerful corporate mogul with a gleaming smile that Wallander believes hides the evil glee of a killer. Joined by Ann-Britt Hoglund, Wallander begins to uncover the truth, but the same merciless individuals responsible for the murders are now closing in on him.

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