| Title | : | The Man Who Smiled (Kurt Wallander, #4) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1565849930 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781565849938 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 325 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1994 |
All of Henning Mankell's talents as a master of the modern police procedural, which have earned him legions of fans worldwide, are showcased in
The Man Who Smiled (Kurt Wallander, #4) Reviews
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Our main character is a Swedish detective who is “lost.” He’s on leave suffering from deep depression from having to justifiably kill a man. He’s also disgusted with the increasing bureaucracy of the system and dislikes the new ways displacing the old. He fears the administrative bloat of the system and envisions a day when all the administrators, former police officers, will simply pass paper to each in their offices. Yet he is supportive of a woman detective who is put down in various ways by most of the other men.
We pretty much know from the start who the bad guy is: a big-time financier and jet-setter who controls a mega-million international corporation. The bad guy lives in a McCastle within an electronically guarded compound in the countryside. Part of the mystery is figuring out exactly what kind of scam he has going.
The detective knows his thugs are responsible for the three murders, (two “accidents” and a “suicide”), as well as a failed car bomb and land mine attack. He decides not to resign from the force only when an acquaintance of his is one of those killed. He comes back to police work with a vengeance.
This police procedural is an easy and engaging read. This is one of several books with the same character known as the Kurt Wallender series. You can’t get lost in the meticulously constructed plot. The story is told from the POV of the main character and he mentally reviews, or reviews at daily meetings and with his partner, where we are in the investigation. He even fills us in on dates and times. And maybe at times it’s TOO much – in one paragraph we learn he was back at the police station just after 1:00; at 4:00 he went to the prosecutor’s office; he did not leave until 10:00 and he was home by 11:00!
A line I liked: “It’s always easier to maintain a cleverly constructed lie than it is to find an unclear truth.”
We get some local color of Ystad of the south coast of Sweden, a real town, along with a map of the city center and a map of the outlying district so we can follow the action.
photos of Ystad: top from prettywildworld.com;
bottom from marinas.com -
Evil! 😈
That’s the only description that I have for “the man who smiled.”
An attorney is found murdered on the side of the road. No one suspects murder…except the son of the victim.
An old friend of Wallander comes for a visit, and asks him for help investigating. Another murder.
This is one of the most suspenseful books by Henning, that I have ever read. It kept me glued to my iPad. Unable to breathe. Scared to death for Wallander. Frightening.
Five fantastic stars. 💫💫💫💫💫 -
The opening of the fourth novel in this series finds Kurt Wallander in a deep depression. At the conclusion of the last book, he shot a man to death, and even though it was clearly a case of self-defense, he's devastated by the fact that he has taken another man's life. After brooding over the incident for more than a year, Wallander resolves to quit the police force and is at the point of turning in his papers when a very bizarre case grabs his attention.
An elderly lawyer has died. The reader knows right away that the man was murdered, but the murder is successfully disguised as an auto accident and fools the initial investigation. The man's son, also a lawyer, makes a clandestine visit to Kurt Wallander, who is still recovering, and tries to convince him to investigate his father's death.
Wallander refuses and presses ahead with his intention to resign. But then the son is murdered and Wallander determines to investigate. He returns to the force, and quickly proves that the father's death was a homicide and not accident. But trying to identify the killer will take all of Wallander's considerable skills--that is, if he survives that long.
This is another very good entry in the series. The characters are fully developed; the plot is engaging, and the police investigation seems very realistic. Fans of the series will enjoy it and it should appeal to any fan of Scandinavian crime fiction. Kurt Wallander is the polar opposite of someone like Lucas Davenport who could easily kill a couple of bad guys before breakfast and not worry about it any longer than lunch. He's the prototypical Scandinavian detective--introspective, depressed, and relatively humorless, which makes him an occasionally nice change of pace from his American counterparts. -
The fourth Kurt Wallander novel, The Man That Smiled, I liked the least so far, though it’s still good, and part of the continuing story of the sad sack cop. As opposed to the more ambitious third book, The White Lionness, that takes place in Sweden and South Africa and involves a (thwarted) assassination attempt, The Man That Smiled takes place, as does the first novel, Faceless Killers, in (mostly) Sweden. It begins with Wallander on vacation, miserable because in that last case he had killed a man. So he’s depressed, constantly drunk, deciding to quit. We don't like or admire him at this point, of course, but maybe there's a bit of sympathy. Of course with the advantage/disadvantage of reading a 1994 book in a series with ten books, I know he will not ultimately quit. Not yet. And besides, I didn’t find his existential crisis all that compelling: Let’s get back to work, Kurt!
One thing I noticed, having just read a string of Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole books, is a series of parallels between Hole and Wallander (written more than a decade before, though also Nordic Noir). Both are drunks, both have father challenges, women “issues,” experience guilt over dead people in their work, and actually quit and are lured back into the work. Both are outsiders, generally miserable, yet admirable in their obsessive drive to catch criminals, sometimes for vague reasons. Neither are saints. They both break the law at times to catch bad guys, and so on. I know many of these descriptors are typical tec tropes, but I feel sometimes that Hole was written through Wallander. I guess that’s just literature, you build on what's come before.
Anyway, when Wallander comes back as an old lawyer friend’s Dad seems to have committed suicide, then the lawyer himself is killed the next day. Wallander is (of course) also nearly car-bombed, as he begins work with work with a young new female (!? gosh!) detective. So it's pretty much straightforward police procedural for the next ⅓ of the book as we try to figure out how these accidents/suicides are actually murders. Then things turn Jo Nesbo thriller as Mankell takes on another international issue actually impacting Sweden, even in 1994: The killing of people to harvest body parts and sell them to the highest bidder. And who is involved but a cartoonish rich guy (this is The Man Who Smiled of the title; and guess who is going to get him to stop constantly smiling? You guessed it, good) who is known for being a philanthropist in Sweden. (Here is another parallel with Nesbo; we seem to require these cartoonish rich or privileged characters; Nesbo's fantasy villain is the too-beautiful Hole colleague Tom Waaler). Lots of people shot, helicopter escapes, stopping a plane from leaving the tarmac, with the generally middling detective suddenly achieving near super hero (Bond-ish) skills I found unrealistic, a little silly at times.
Still, I like the developing story of Wallander, with his (less-estranged, now) daughter and still crazy father tormenting him, and his partnering with the new and very promising woman detective, bumbling along to try and keep the relationship going with his (possible) Latvian girlfriend, and his getting in shape (as Hole did) to try to be a good cop. -
Coffee was supposedly introduced to Europe by Dutch traders in the late 1600s. I think it's safe to say that at that point, every Swedish detective immediately started guzzling copious amounts of the stuff & haven't stopped this practice since. It is of no surprise to me that Wallander has such bad insomnia; when you come home at 3 in the morning & drink a cup of coffee, is it any wonder that you're still awake at 6:30? Although I appreciate his dedication to duty, in that he just drinks more coffee & heads to work to continue solving crimes, I wish he'd just lay off the coffee already & get some sleep.
I like Wallander a lot as a character and I like the people he works with. I think this may have just been a bad place to start out this series, because the mystery seems a little far-fetched. Your lawyer finds out some of your dirty secrets, so you kill him. Okay so far. You also kill his son just to make certain he can't tell anything he might know about you. Also fine by me. But when you plant a land mine in the secretary's back yard, that seems a bit overboard. And Wallander is so insistent that this criminal wouldn't possibly kill a cop who's sneaking around his property - but he planted a land mine in an old lady's backyard! He's already tried to blow you up you up in your car, anyway, so how does that follow? -
Book Review
The second review of two crime novels whose titles hint at laughter and joy, Mankell's novel The Man Who Smiled is in my opinion the best to date in the Wallander series. In the first review, we discovered the significance of how morose Martin Beck finally came to emit a burst of laughter in the last paragraph of that novel:
The Laughing Policeman. I find this significant. Let's face it: laughter, joy, humor, these are not exactly the words I would describe as pertinent to Nordic crime novels (with the possible exception of Jussi Adler-Olson's
Department Q novels). Granted, some of the humor is lost in tranlation, as
Jo Nesbo recently stated in an interview here on Goodreads. And as I mentioned in the
Martin Beck novel of similar title, my reading these two novels in succession is entirely accidental. It just so happened that I found myself reading two scandinavian crime novels whose titles revolved around laughter even though the titles were not part of my selection process at all. I read series novels in succession, holding to the belief that authors who write series have a reason for doing so, and that one follows after the other especially in terms of ongoing character development and plot. To read them out of sequence is to miss key aspects of the ongoing story line. It's like arriving late to a meeting only to ask questions already discussed during one's absence. And it just so happened that #4 in both of these series were next in my queue. Do I think the similarity in titles between Per/Maj and Mankell's 4th in the respective series are coincidental? No, I do not. I believe this novel is Mankell's homage to the 4th in the Beck series and that the title is deliberate.
Even though I've given this novel high ratings I do want to disclose something up front. Throughout the novel I was puzzled by the notion of a policeman so distraught about having to use his service revolver - one that ended up killing a criminal - that he left his police career and wandered a beach for weeks on end in obvious emotional pain. Clearly, any American policeman would frown at the notion. Here the police is trained to use their weapon, and though counseling is offered for any rightuous shooting, most policemen here would not leave their jobs as a result of having used their weapon. But, after some internal reflection I found that I, like our fictituous average American policeman, suffer from an ignorance of Scandinavia.
Cover of Singing Sands, a Tey novel...but what I imagine as Wallendar, walking across a lonely beach
As we saw in my
first review, we find that Kollberg in that Martin Beck novel is a hard-core socialist, does not believe in guns and as a result doesn't carry one in his position as a police detective. Perhaps back then, this was doable. And certainly as a crime novel this tendency served to only accentuate violent crime and the apprehension of perpetrators for the purposes of writing a crime novel. The Martin Beck novels were written some 50 years ago, when Scandinavia was relatively peaceful, non-violent, and the countries did not suffer from later infiltration of crime families and consequent crimes that include gun smuggling, drugs and human trafficking, if not the threat of terrorism itself. In his Wallander novels, Mankell clearly carries over some of these concepts from the Per and Maj novels, infusing into Wallander's character socialist tendencies (though to a lesser degree) even though these novels were written some 30 years later. In general, most Scandinavian countries today are still known as benign, social democratic wellfare states. Ystad, where most of the Wallander novels take place is still relatively peaceful, even though hints of organized crime that are already tangible in larger cities like Stockholm are beginning to filter down to smaller locales like Ystad. Service revolvers in Ystad are often found in desk drawers, rather than on the detective's person when out investigating crime.
Second, Wallander's character is such that facts are easily digested by this policeman, whereas emotional consequences are not (unlike the Martin Beck series). I relegate the cause for this to the writers themselves. In the Martin Beck series, we have police procedurals written by Marxists. Emotion is downgraded, social issues upgraded, statist policies encouraged as they are applied to the masses instead of to individuals and all of it accompanied by economic vitriol of anything that smacks of capitalism: namely individual success and wealth are the result of greed. Henning Mankell is not like Beck's authors in this regard. Mankell is a humanitarian. Aside from his career as a writer, his personal life is heavily involved with his emotional ties to disenfranchised third world countries (Africa, mainly) and his view of their inhabitants is one of indivduals, not the masses. Henning Mankel is an emotional man...and consequently, so is Wallander. Firing his service pistol and killing another human being stands against everything both writer and protagonist represent.
Come to think of it: high crimes, violence and a large portion of citizens incarcerated seems to be a peculiar American phenomenon and I'm not sure how well that speaks of us as a so-called free nation (another discussion).
As I said: the coincidence in similar titles is no coincidence at all. Aside from the similar title Per and Maj gave The Laughing Policeman, Mankell here gives us a phenomonal police procedural (my first 5 star rating for a Wallander novel) that revolves around the idea of wiping the smile off the face of a suspected criminal. In the case of The Laughing Policeman laughter is a response to futility and exasperation. In the case of The Man Who Smiled laughter when expressed as contempt for the disenfranchised must be wiped out. Wallander is not a humerous man and he is not prone to laughter. Scandinavia frowns rather than laughs at life. Like Beck, he has trouble connecting to family. Like Beck he is morose, cannot sleep, is lonely, and is often ill at ease with his colleagues. Like the Beck novel we know who the perpetrator is early on. The Man Who Smiled also speaks to a systemic dysfunction on police teams. It speaks to the unenviable boredom and tediousness that incorporates a police team's daily work. Unlike Beck, however, Wallander is driven by emotion: by loyalty and compassion and outrage.
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Series Review
Henning Mankell is an internationally known Swedish crime writer known mostly for this fictional character Kurt Wallander. He is married to Eva Bergman.
Henning Mankell - Author
It might be said that the fall of communism and the consequent increase in Swedish immigration and asylum seekers has been the engine that drives much of Swedish crime fiction. Mankell's social conscience, his cool attitude towards nationalism and intolerance is largely a result of the writer's commitment to helping the disadvantaged (see his theater work in Africa). In this vein, readers might be interested in his stand-alone novel
Kennedy's Brain a thriller set in Africa and inspired by the AIDS epidemic (Mankell often traveled to Africa to help third world populations); or read his
The Eye of the Leopard, a haunting novel juxtaposing a man's coming of age in Sweden and his life in Zambia.
Mankell's love of Africa, his theater work on that continent, and his exploits in helping the disadvantaged is not generally known by his American readers. In fact, an international news story that has largely gone unnoticed is that while the world watched as Israeli soldiers captured ships attempting to break the Gaza blockade, few people are aware that among the prisoners of the Israelis was one of the world's most successful and acclaimed writers: Henning Mankell.
It is no exaggeration when I say that Henning Mankell is by far one of the most successful writers in Scandinavia, especially in his own country of Sweden. The Nordic weather, cold to the bones, drives its populace indoors for much of the year where cuddling up to read the latest in crime fiction is a national pastime.
For many GR readers who have been introduced to Kurt Wallander it is interesting to note that ultimately the success of bringing Mankell to English speaking audiences only came after bringing in the same production company responsible for Steig Larsson's Millennium trilogy for the wildly popular BBC version starring Kenneth Branagh. Viewers had no problem with an anglicized version of Mankell's work, an English speaking cast set down in a genuine Swedish countryside. Of course, to those fans thoroughly familiar with Mankell's work, it is the Swedish televised version that is found to be a more accurately portrayal of Mankell's novels...not the British, sensationalized version. And there's a reason for that.
Henning's prose is straightforward, organized, written mostly in linear fashion, a straightforward contract with the reader. It is largely quantified as police procedural work. The work of men who are dogged and patient to a fault. Kurt Wallander, the hero in Mankell's novels, is the alter ego of his creator: a lonely man, a dogged policeman, a flawed hero, out of shape, suffering from headaches and diabetes, and possessing a scarred soul. Understandably so and if some of the GR reviews are an indication; like his famous father-in-law Ingmar Bergman, Mankell is from a country noted for its Nordic gloom. But before you make the assumption that this is yet another addition to the somberness and darkness that characterizes Nordic writing Mankell often confounds this cliche with guarded optimism and passages crammed with humanity (for Mankell, this is true both personally and professionally as a writer).
As Americans we often think of Sweden as possessing an very open attitude towards sex and that this is in marked contrast (or perhaps reprieve) to the somber attitudes of its populace. But this is a view that often confounds Swedish people. The idea of Nordic carnality is notably absent in Mankell's work, as much a statement of its erroneous perception (Swedes do not see themselves as part of any sexual revolution at all) and in the case of Mankell ironic because the film director most responsible for advancing these explicit sexual parameters (for his time) was his own father-in-law the great Ingmar Bergman. In a world where Bergman moves in a universe where characters are dark, violent, extreme and aggressive - take note that the ultimate root of this bloody death and ennui lies in the Norse and Icelandic Viking sagas of Scandinavian history - that dark, somber view ascribed to both Mankell and Bergman's work was often a topic of intense jovial interest between these two artists.
For any reader of Nordic crime fiction, Henning Mankell is an immensely popular and staple read.
Enjoy! -
Ufff, es increíble lo mucho que ha crecido Wallander, es todo un personaje y cada vez lo quiero más, aunque el pobre sufra más. En esta entrega estuve súper intrigada y en momentos sentí un miedo diferente.
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Mais um caso resolvido por Kurt Wallander, mais um excelente policial desta série.
Até ao próximo. -
Wonderful book. Presenting truly how police work impacts a man's psyche. The shooting, though justifiable, weighs heavily on Kurt. A year has passed and he is resolved, after 25 years service, to retire from the police force.
During a visit to Denmark, he is visited by Sten Torstensson, an old friend, now practicing lawyer in his father's firm. His father had been recently found dead in an "accident". Kurt declines his request to investigate the matter deeper.
Returning to Sweden, he finds an obituary for Sten. His interest peaked, he finds himself rethinking his decision to retire.
The investigation is one of the best written that I've read so far. Police follow many avenues with small clues coming in and yet not presenting a clear motive or murderer. It is only the discovery by the police forensic scientist of a plastic can that presents those.
Mankell writes well of police frustrations with Sweden's sentencing standards and yet this book finds itself ending on a very soft note in this area. The contractor of the murders is apprehended at the airport but I found myself thinking that he would never be sentenced appropriately based on the evidence available. -
A Kurt Wallender police procedural - or not... since Wallender does not always follow police procedures :)
It is best if you read these books in order... even though each one is a "stand alone" in many ways, there are references in Wallenders personal life that will be unclear if you have not read the books in order. This is book 4 (1 is FAceless Killers, 2 is Dogs of Riga, 3 is White Lioness)
This book begins with Wallender doubting himself and dealing with the occurrences in Book 3 where he had to kill a man. At this point he takes an extended to leave to deal with his feelings. As he is pacing along the beach, thinking, a friend of his, Sten Torstenssen, visits him and wants Wallenders help. Sten's father recently died in a car accident - and Sten does not believe it was an accident. Wallender tells Sten he cannot help him.
Soon after Wallender returns home - where he decides to leave the police force. On the day he is to leave - he learns that Sten has been murdered... and the story begins. Wallender feels guilty for not helping his friend and knows he must not let him down now... he must solve the crime -
Every time I read a Mankell book, I'm reminded why I keep picking up one of his books out of hundreds on my to-read list. I just love his stories and his writing.
I read more of Henning Mankell than any other authors, living or dead. That must have said something, right?
Now that I have read most of his books, I am going to ration myself. I want him to beat cancer and keep writing - my fingers are firmly crossed and he has my prayers, I know that he will always be one of the greatest, as well as my favourite author.
Recommend without hesitation! -
Kurt Wallander mystery No. 4):
Wallander finds himself in allsorts of crisis after he had to kill a man whilst on duty! The murder of a friend gives him focus, alongside Ann-Britt Hoglund, the department's first female detective has they look to investigate the prime suspect, a global business tycoon who is forever smiling. It's Wallander and co. vs the privileged and empowered in this OK case. 5 out of 12.
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No es lo mejor que ha escrito Henning Mankill, extrañé la parte histórica e intrincada de otros de sus thrillers; en este libro se predice tempranamente la identidad del victimario, sin embargo es un libro que me dio varias horas de entretenimiento y me agradó su lectura.
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“Who is this Harderberg? A monster?”
“He’s a friendly, suntanned man who’s always smiling,” Wallander said. “He’s also elegantly dressed. There are lots of ways a monster can look.” -
Another excellent thriller by an accomplished author. Narrated by an equally accomplished performer. Having read all the authors books, I’ll just read them again. R.I.P.
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The Man Who Smiled is number four in the Wallander series, picking up some time after Wallander's experiences in book 3, The White Lioness. As book four opens, Wallander is still on sick leave, and has made the decision during a period of incredibly intense depression that he will not be continuing on in his career as a policeman. But all of that changes when a friend seeks him out to ask him for help regarding the case of his father's death. The police had ruled it a car accident, but the friend is convinced that it was not. Wallander tells him that the police are most likely correct -- but then his friend is also mysteriously killed. This prompts Wallander to return to the job to find out what lays behind the deaths of father and son ... and uncovers much more than he bargained for.
While the plot will keep you turning pages and provide you with more than a few tense moments, what really made this book stand out was the character of Kurt Wallander. For the first time, really, since I started this series, I really got an insight into how Wallander thinks and what makes him a great cop. Mankell's characterization of Wallander is absolutely stunning, making him much more human in this book as compared to all of the other ones. It was absolutely amazing to be allowed into Wallander's thought processes -- I think Wallander became very real for me in this book for the first time in the series. When a character can become that real, it's definitely a sign that his or her creator is a top-notch writer.
The author does not only offer up a first-rate criminal and first-rate policemen here; he also raises several questions about the future of police forces, about the decline of the whole basis of the modern Swedish state as the profits of corruption become more entrenched, and about issues of morality & the true nature of justice in a world where crime is constantly changing and the police and justice system are trying to adapt. These questions are not relevant just to Sweden, but everywhere.
A bit on the gloomy side, this is not a book for readers looking for a lighthearted crime novel. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a superb reading experience, but I suggest starting with book one, Faceless Killers, and continuing the books in series order. Mankell is an excellent writer, definitely not to be missed. -
This is a real crock of a book.
Wallander is depressed cause he shot a crim and still has relationship problems with his father - which is just layed on as a break from the investigation to show that he has problems outside work.
Is he coming back into the police after his bout with depression and hard drinking. Yes he is and on day one - he is given the case of a father and son pair of solicitors who are murdered. And he is welcomed back as a returning hero.
For a crime book - this contains no red herrings / false trails / interest / excitement. The man (a rich businessman who does everything including ripping of councils and body part trafficing! Please!) is identified as the killer at the start of the book and 300 pages later, he is the killer. Not great reading.
And to top it all - after storming the villians lair for the big literary confrontration - a washed up 50 year manages to overpower two armed special forces henchmen on his way to his execution. With a stone.
This is the laziest, least exciting, non event of a crime book that is shocking that it was ever released. Will I read the next one in the series. Maybe. Maybe they get better. -
What a creepy bad guy!
KW is such a broken, sad man, but a brilliant police man. He will get his man, no matter what he has to do. -
There are many book related things I could say about the fourth Wallander installment --
The Man Who Smiled. Stuff about the excellent introduction of Ann-Britt Höglund and Wallander as a character and the breakneck pace and the way the BBC adaptation of this differed in good ways and bad. But reading this particular book led me to a realization, and I'd rather talk about that.
I have often wondered why, even though I am compelled to read detective fiction -- which at its best still tends to see the world as more black and white than I -- the genre fills me with anxiety and sadness. The obvious answer is because "terrible things" happen in these books, and those things make me feel bad. But that answer has never flown for me, and I rejected it the very first time I wondered why.
I know the answer now, and it came to me in the final discussion between Dr. Harderberg and Kurt Wallander:"You have to understand that [selling human organs] is but a tiny part of my activities. It's negligible, marginal. But it's what I do, Inspector Wallander. I buy and sell. I'm an actor on the stage govered by market forces. I never miss an opportunity, no matter how small and insignificant it is."
And therein lies my anxiety and sadness. I myself believe that "human life is insignificant." Or rather that human life is no more or less significant that any other life, from microscopic bacteria to the smallest plant or insect to the largest and most complex of mammals. All of it. The whole shebang. And that these books I read situate what I believe in the black side of their balck & white outlook.
Human life is insignificant, then, Wallander thought. That's the premise on which Harderberg's whole existence is based.
Every killer I've ever seen in every detective/mystery/serial killer book I've ever read is written to believe the same thing (
The Man Who Smiled just happened to make it explicit in a revealing way), suggesting that people who believe that humanity is insignificant must be "bastards," must be traitors to humanity, must be, in some way, depraved. That stresses me out. And it is just not true.
That belief in human insignificance or the lack of human superiority does not equal evil or wickedness or wrong. Of course it can, but so can anything. The truth is that people who believe these things are just as likely to love all life. They are capable of great good too.
But I am faced daily by the fact that I am in an extreme minority. It is harder for people to understand what I believe than it is for the religious majority to understand how the atheist minority can behave morally without the dictates of a god (and that is a pretty serious misunderstanding, so imagine my despair).
When I read a book by an author like
Henning Mankell, I am faced with what makes me a societal outsider in the starkest of terms.
Perhaps I should stop depressing and stressing myself, stop reading these stories, but I am compelled to continue reading them because I must remain engaged with the humanist majority, keeping the debate alive in my head. If I don't, I'll tuck my head in my shell and desiccate in the desert heat. -
Wallanderis nemirtingasis.
https://knyguziurkes.com/2021/05/02/t... -
On my list of favorite detectives, Kurt Wallander is close to the top where Inspector Morse resides with Armand Gamache and Guido Brunetti. Although I thought this book was fine, it wasn't my favorite Wallander or my favorite Henning Mankell, for that matter; far from it. There was some wonderfully evocative moodiness and the usual good characterizations, but very little suspense and a lot of clunky translation; I don't understand why the latter would have occurred, as the book was translated by the usual person, who generally does a superb job. So...I am already looking forward to the next installment in the series, but will not be dwelling on this one.
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https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/202... -
Astenersi amanti del thriller mozzafiato.
Leggendo i non pochi commenti negativi a “L’uomo che sorrideva” è doveroso sgombrare immediatamente il campo da un equivoco: molti romanzi di Mankell, e questo in particolare, NON sono dei thriller e a ben vedere non sono neppure “gialli” finalizzati a risolvere il rebus dell’individuazione (in modo deduttivo o intuitivo) del colpevole.
Si tratta di storie che tendono a concentrarsi soprattutto sull’analisi dell’indagine, della struttura mentale e organizzativa degli investigatori, Wallander ma non solo, descrivendo con particolare verosimiglianza un lavoro pieno di dubbi, incertezze, errori, false piste, incomprensioni fra colleghi, interminabili e ripetitive riunioni nel corso delle quali a volte si aggiunge un piccolo tassello all’indagine, a volte neppure quello, col conseguente senso di frustrazione e avvilimento che avvolge i componenti del team investigativo.
Poco allettante davvero per il lettore alla ricerca di azione, suspense, inchieste che procedano per lampi di genio e non tramite la minuziosa ricostruzione dei fatti e delle loro miriadi di possibili interpretazioni.
Sull’altro piatto della bilancia c’è tuttavia l’estrema umanità dei personaggi, coi loro problemi familiari e psicologici (quale altro “eroe” poliziesco potrebbe andare in depressione per oltre un anno a causa delle ripercussioni morali della fortuita uccisione di un criminale?!), il realismo del contesto in questa regione a sua volta priva di asperità e bellezze del paesaggio, ma piatta, nebbiosa e incolore.
Solo alla fine, forse per compensare questa staticità, Mankell ci propina un frettoloso finale alla James Bond, e questa forse è l’unica caduta di stile del libro, confermandoci che l’autore risolve la prevedibilissima conclusione dell’inchiesta quasi come un atto dovuto da esaurire rapidamente e senza dedicarvi particolare inventiva: ulteriore delusione per chi si aspetta la catena di mirabolanti colpi di scena, rovesciamenti di situazione e voltafaccia con cui si tendono a condire i finali di tanti attuali polizieschi!
Ma lasciate perdere, questa è Ystad… -
This is the second Kurt Wallander book I've read, and enjoyed quite a bit.
Wallander is on sick leave after accidentally killing a man on duty, walking on a beach in Denmark, when a friend of his comes to ask for help. He suspects the death of his dad was not an accident. A few days later that friend is killed, and Wallander makes his decision to return to work to find justice for his friend, to find out who killed him, and what really happened to the father of his friend. Before long, the secretary of the two dead man is tried to blow up, and Wallander's life seems to be in danger too.
Some people in goodreads didn't seem to like this, and I guess that's because they expected something more of a classic cozy mystery with a dozen red herrings. It's not a cozy, it's more of a police procedural. A Swedish Harry Bosch (smart, working alone most of the time and at his best, insecure of some things, Björk being Irving Irving etc) but without the million twists and turns in the story. A police procedural that is designed in clear lines and patterns like IKEA furniture.
There are strong elements of Sweden and Scandinavia in the book (people, habits etc), and Wallander's thoughts thru the book are as always there. He's feeling lonely, trying to be nice to his dad (who as always is a d-ck), still longing for Baiba in Latvia. -
Wallander torna al lavoro dopo un periodo profondo di crisi per la quarta indagine raccontata da Mankell. Questa volta il colpevole per l'omicidio di due avvocati è quasi ovvio, ma mancano le prove.
Più che gialli i libri di Mankell sono romanzi sulla vita, sul modo di essere degli scandinavi. Mi ha colpita una frase di Wallander riguardante il mestiere di pittore del padre:
"In quante case, su quante pareti poteva essere appeso quel quadro con o senza gallo cedrone e con un sole che non tramontava mai? Per la prima volta, Wallander aveva capito qualcosa che non aveva visto prima. Per tutta la sua vita, suo padre aveva impedito al sole di tramontare. Quello era stata la base della sua esistenza, il suo credo. Suo padre aveva dipinto quadri, e le persone che li appendevano alle pareti delle loro case potevano vedere, giorno dopo giorno, il sole."
Deve proprio essere un popolo malinconico. -
Un apparente incidente stradale, un avvocato freddato da dei colpi di pistola nel suo studio legale e poi il ritrovamento di una mina antiuomo nel giardino della segretaria dello studio legale delle due vittime ; infine una carica esplosiva nel serbatoio dello stesso Wallander, che rischia per un pelo di porre fine alla sua carriera- e alla sua vita. Ci sono abbastanza elementi per far presagire al lettore che anche questa indagine sarà una bella gatta da pelare per il nostro investigatore. Un indiziato , a dire la verità, c'è già, ma sembra sempre più difficile, man mano che trascorre il tempo, riuscire ad incastrarlo perchè si tratta di un magnate della finanza svedese, molto potente ed altrettanto inaccessibile. Appassionante fin dalle prime pagine, con un ritmo abbastanza serrato e un finale a dir poco rocambolesco, con tanto di lotta contro il tempo, anche questo episodio che vede protagonista il commissario Wallander è all'altezza delle aspettative, anche se non il migliore.
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I love the gloomy, foggy, windy, damp, or bitterly cold (etc.) Swedish setting, which mirrors Kurt Wallander's depression, angst, and solitude. The unraveling of the mystery is a bit less complicated than you'd like it to be.
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This must be included in the "Scandinavian crime"-phenomenon by the gravitational pull of others (including some of Mankell's granted). The bad guy (the smiling one) is so far from believable that it makes the book virtually unreadable. I did finish it, but I don't remember why.
