Faceless Killers (Kurt Wallander Series #1) by Henning Mankell, Steven T. Murray (Translator)

From the Publisher

First in the Kurt Wallander series.

It was a senselessly violent crime: on a cold night in a remote Swedish farmhouse an elderly farmer is bludgeoned to death, and his wife is left to die with a noose around her neck. And as if this didn’t present enough problems for the Ystad police Inspector Kurt Wallander, the dying woman’s last word is foreign, leaving the police the one tangible clue they have–and in the process, the match that could inflame Sweden’s already smoldering anti-immigrant sentiments.

Unlike the situation with his ex-wife, his estranged daughter, or the beautiful but married young prosecuter who has peaked his interest, in this case, Wallander finds a problem he can handle. He quickly becomes obsessed with solving the crime before the already tense situation explodes, but soon comes to realize that it will require all his reserves of energy and dedication to solve.

Publishers Weekly

In his first appearance in English, Swedish bestselling author Mankell combines thriller-quality entertainment with a depiction of anti-foreigner prejudice in Sweden, painted here as a very chilly place indeed. Since his wife walked out on him, Kurt Wallender, a middle-aged cop in the small town of Lenarp, has drowned his sorrows in opera and far too much liquor. Such consolations can't help him absorb the scene at the Lovgren farm, where elderly Johannes Lovgren has been brutally beaten and stabbed to death and where his wife, Maria, is found barely alive with a noose around her neck. Rydberg, a police force old-timer, says the noose's unusual knot and the word foreigner, which Maria uttered before she died, are important. Wallender puts those clues on the back burner when he learns that Johannes, ostensibly a simple farmer, had a secret life involving wealth and connections unknown to his wife. However, a leak to the press complicates the investigation by arousing anti-immigrant feelings, some of which are expressed in anonymous threats. Mankell is clearly a skilled writer, and his portrait of Wallender (who periodically slides beneath respectability) is effective. But he provides essential information only at the last minute, which makes the solution feel more like an appendix than a conclusion. Also, American readers may find odd Mankell's bundling of his upright anti-racism message with broad notions of what constitutes acceptable social control. (Mar.)

Library Journal

This brilliant U.S. debut is the first book in a Swedish mystery series. An elderly couple is murdered on an isolated farm after being tortured brutally. The woman's last word, "foreign," unleashes an onslaught of antirefugee sentiment that Police Inspector Kurt Wallender tries to quell. Then the cold-blooded murder of a Somali refugee entangles the inspector further as he tries to solve that related crime as well. Meanwhile, he sloshes through the detritus of his own dsyfunctional life, trying to reconnect with his wife, who's left him; his daughter, who refuses to see him; and his father, who is slipping toward senility. The author goes well beyond the narrow police procedural in creating a full-bodied Wallender and in casting light on the refugee problem in contemporary Swedish society. Wallender is reminiscent of Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford in his low-key, thoughtful performance.

Kirkus Reviews

Who would so savagely kill an elderly farming couple in the Swedish town of Lenarp—the husband gruesomely tortured, the wife slowly strangled with a noose tied in an unusual knot—and then step out to the couple's barn to feed their horse? Inspector Kurt Wallander, battling midlife crisis—his estranged daughter has rarely called him since she lit out from home; his estranged wife greets him by telling him how much weight he's put on—would love to have the leisure to speculate about the identity of the killers, described only by the dying Maria Lövgren as "foreign." As acting chief of the Ystad police, though, he's got more urgent business on his hands: a series of xenophobic phone calls ("You now have three days to make up for shielding foreign criminals. . . . Or else we'll take over") from somebody who's willing to set fire to a refugee camp barracks and gun down a visiting Somali to show how serious he is. Surprised by the news that Johannes Lövgren was not exactly the colorless chap he appeared, Wallander despairs of finding enough time or energy to kindle a romance with deputy D.A. Anette Brolin, who's married to boot. But how long will it take his plunge into ethnic hatred to give him the answers he needs?

Though "the last thing Kurt Wallander felt like was a laughing policeman," fans of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö will feel right at home in this first (1991) of Mankell's five Wallander novels, right down to the laconic paragraphing. Readers who think of Sweden as snow-white are in for a surprise.

Product Details

• ISBN: 1400031575
  
• ISBN-13: 9781400031573
• Format: Paperback, 288pp
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Pub. Date: January 2003
• Edition Description: Reprint
• Sales Rank: 3,825
• Series: Kurt Wallander Series, #1

• Table of Contents
• Reading Group Guide

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide