Starred review from July 28, 2008
The five stories in this outstanding collection from Mankell (Faceless Killers
) provide glimpses into Kurt Wallander's early life as a policeman as well as paint evocative portraits of contemporary Swedish society. An unremarkable businessman is poisoned in “The Man on the Beach” but—in typical Mankell fashion—the case is larger, more complex and more interesting than it first appears. In the volume's best entry, “The Death of the Photographer,” Simon Lamberg takes studio portraits of weddings and children, but a couple of nights each week, he uses his darkroom to distort published photographs of politicians and newsworthy people for a macabre personal scrapbook. It's a bizarre hobby, but the cause of Lamberg's brutal, apparently senseless death is an even stranger puzzle. Like the Wallander novels, these stories rank among the finest police procedurals being written today.
Starred review from August 1, 2008
In this retrospective collection, internationally best-selling Swedish mystery author Mankell proves himself a master of the short form. This five-story collection offers a look at how Mankells series hero, Inspector Kurt Wallander, came to be the cop he is.In Wallanders First Case, Mankell flashes back to his heros first homicide investigation, an off-hours project undertaken while Wallander was still working as a Malmo beat cop. The collections title story moves forward in time, picking up Wallander, now the intuitive lead officer of the Ystad violent crimes unit. Wallanders marriage, separation, and divorce are all examined as well as his strained relationship with his eccentric father and his evolving relationship with his daughter, Linda. Fans of the series will be most interested, however, in the extended portrait of Rydberg, Wallanders beloved mentor and former colleague, who only appears tangentially in the novels. These stories will also serve as an excellent introduction to Mankell in particular and to Scandinavian crime fiction in general; significantly, the first two stories share much the same tone, style, and setting as the works of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Mankells great predecessors.The Wallander series, which Mankell believes should be subtitled novels of Swedish anxiety, are essential reading for all crime-fiction fans, and this collection adds an indispensable chapter to the saga.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)