I have just finished reading Firewall. Although I live in Sweden, this is my first Mankell. Firewall has introduced me to this wonderful author. I have just ordered The Dogs of Riga.

There are two primary plot lines in Firewall--a potential crime and the personal life of Inspect Wallandar, the police lead on the case. Mankell's smooth writing allows the reader to keep pace with a detailed plot. The introduction of new characters into the story is always well timed, in that they continue to hold the reader's interest and are congruent with the the story line.

Inspecter Wallandar is a very human police inspector, struggling with loneliness, job anxiety, and retirement at some point in the future. His reflections on his personal relationships and career transcend both age and nationality.

The translation of this book from Swedish is appears to be seamless and is easy to understand with apparently no loss of local color. This is the first Inspector Wallandar book I have read, and is good enough to entice me to seek out the others.

The Italian traslation is always late and so I'd like to thank the english translator.
As to this new case, I think that perhaps it's the best. The level of suspense is very high and Wallander is wonderfully human. Like a real person that you have known for years.
Now I'm waiting for the 9th case, Pyramid.
Let's hope to read it this very year, 2003.

This is one of the better Wallander novels. The story begins with a typical Mankell opening - a killing with incomplete details. The tension builds as Wallander's team are increasingly aware of links with the death of a colleague killed in an apparently unrelated incident. The culmination builds to a crescendo as the killer gets very personal. Some of the details are totally unexplained even at the end of the book, but this does not spoil the overall quality of the writing. In spite of actually being a quiet rural area with a distinctive accent, Skåne comes over in the Wallander series as a lethal place to live. Wallander continues his decline in this book, now suffering from diabetes and angst over his dead father - he reminds me of both John Rebus(by Ian Rankin) and Martin Beck (Sjöwell/Wahlöö). Thoroughly recommended as an expose of aspects of contemporary Swedish society as well as a riveting police procedure novel.

This is the best in Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series to date. While five of his mysteries have been translated, it is not necessary to read them in order. But anyone who begins with "One Step Behind" will surely want to double back to the previous four volumes. (Although only a real die-hard fan will enjoy "The White Lioness.")
Mankell is the best mystery writer writing today. Here's why:
1. The mystery itself is riveting, and the book revolves around that plot. We solve the crime with the team at the Ystad police station. There are no weird or eccentrically-contrived characters as in so many mysteries today. The writing is clean and controlled.
2. Every minor character, every cameo, is a perfect little portrait. There are no "flat" characters.
3. This is not the Sweden of clogs and girls with long blonde braids. This is a society in disintegration where the criminal element threatens to take over. Wallander's comments on the state of Swedish society today are right on target.
4. In sum, we care about Wallander and the characters who revolve around him in the police station and elsewhere. These people are real. They are our neighbors and friends-- people we know in the U.S. or wherever we live.
For a suspenseful mystery, no one is writing this well today. I am a 40-something woman. Today my friend, an 80-something man, said to me: I can never thank you enough for recommending "One Step Behind." I can't put it down!
That says it all.

This is my fourth Kurt Wallender mystery. I am now reading my fifth and last of Mankell's translated works: White Lioness. The story is full of twists and turns as you would normally expect of a well crafted mystery novel. What comes as a surprise in this as well as the other of Mankell's Wallender mysteries is the character development of Mankell's chief protagonist: Kurt Wallender. It is a real treat to read an effective combination of police procedural and character development. Mankell pays attention not only to the Wallender character but he also attends to the development of the other characters who appear in the books. In this book, there is a believable and particularly evil villain who challenges your imagination. The only part of the book that I did not like, had to do with the introduction of a new character, the prosecuting attorney, who distracts from the intent of the story. Mankell also captures the wonderful sensitivity of Sweden and often highlights those things about Swedish people which make them so people-centered. I recommend this book to you and look forward to the translation of more of them.

The fifht book about Kurt Wallander is set on one of the most memorable swedish summers of the 90's, 1994. The weather was wonderful, and all of Sweden were watching the fabolous swedish succes in the soccer world cup in the USA. Therefore it's fortunate that Mankell chose this year as setting for what was to be the Wallander-series masterpiece. Everything the other books tries to be, this one is. It's a horrifying novel of suspense, as well as a sharp comment on the swedish society. Wallander's brilliand mind, which in the other volumes is a bit too brilliant, is here dulled by the tiredness and confusion that springs from the shrewdness of the killer they can't seem to catch. In the most memorable of summers raves the most memorable of killers. Because, without turning this into a spoiler, I have to add that the killer's what gives the book the final touch, and makes it not only a great detective story, but a great novel, to.

Sidetracked was first published in Sweden in 1995, and now with Steven T. Murray's able translation, the United States audience will be able to read this Scandinavian thriller/murder mystery. Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series is very popular in Europe, and Sidetracked won the Best Crime Novel of the Year award there. Sidetracked is the third Kurt Wallander mystery, following Faceless Killers and The White Lioness. Mankell currently lives in exotic Mozambique. Inspector Kurt Wallander works at the police station in Ystad Sweden. He is divorced, ready to go on vacation with his girlfriend Baiba, and is undergoing the uncertainty of a new police chief, possible reorganization of his department, and a rising caseload. His nightmare begins with the suicide of an unknown girl in a farmer's rapeseed field: "Afterward Wallander would remember the burning girl in the rapeseed field the way you remember, with the greatest reluctance, a distant nightmare you'd rather forget. Even though he seemed to maintain at least an outward sense of calm for the entire evening and far into the night, later he could recall nothing but irrelevant details. Martinsson, Hansson, and especially Ann-Britt Höglund had been astonished by his impassiveness. But they couldn't see through the shield he had set up to protect himself. Inside him there was devastation like a house that had collapsed." Wallander's life becomes more complicated as a series of brutal axe murders surface. The motis operandi is basically the same, but with subtle differences. Wallander becomes obsessed with stopping the murderer and at the same time identifying the poor girl who had appeared in the rapeseed field and killed herself in such pain. Meanwhile, the murders continue, until Wallander becomes aware that the killer might be focusing on him. Sidetracked is a complex psychological thriller and a first rate murder mystery. It is told in the epic saga style of Scandinavia, complete with the dark richness of Sweden. Wallander is human, with limited resources which he stretches for a higher ideal. He is a hero.

Shelley Glodowski, Reviewer

After reading a German translation of the original Swedish version of "Sidetracked" by Henning Mankell, I was enthralled by the complexity of the plot and of the main character, Kurt Wallander. Reading this book(my first by Mankell), my apppetite to continue reading his books grew steadily. I had never been a fan of niether murder mysteries nor detective novels, but this book really changed my mind. I highly recommend this to any reader.

Kurt Wallander is both the main character and setting of Mankell's 'procedural' crime series. While based in southern Sweden, "The Fifth Woman" is in fact grounded in the rugged landscape of Wallander's interior life - his memories, hopes, shopping lists, prejudices and anxieties. Not since Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder have I read such an angst-ridden and ethically driven protagonist. This is the ultimate introverted hero - he solves crimes using weapons of solitude, intuition, memory-interrogation and a phenonomenal eye for detail. How could you not love a policeman who reminds himself in the midst of the chase to book the laundry room, alert his superiors to a colleague's excessive workload or take time to grieve for his father. Mankell also provides a vivid account of the broader issues that confronted Swedish society in the 1990s - refugees, law and order, social capital and shifting moral foundations. Wallander characterises the times as an age where people have forgotten how to darn their socks, preferring to discard a blemish rather than repair a resource. And the storyline of "The Fifth Woman"? Like Laurie King's "Night Work", "The Fifth Woman" explores issues of violence, revenge and enforcing justice when the system cannot deliver. It is, like Mankell's other Wallander titles, a monumental chronicle of detail, connection and the unfolding of a tightly-bound investigation. The Swedish atmospherics will also help take one's mind off an endless summer.

I picked up "The Fifth Woman" by Henning Mankell because a reviewer favorably compared it to the classic "The Laughing Policeman" by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo (Swedish wife/husband writing team). It doesn't disappoint. This is a book that is worth the price of a hardcover -- meaty, substantive, intricately/well plotted, with great characters.

The three things I noticed that bind all three authors in their works are: 1) the Swedish people's dislike and distrust of the police, 2) the chill and loneliness that seems to pervade human relationships, and 3) police inspectors who are brilliant, meticulous, conscientious, introspective and given to depression. These Swedish police procedurals are not a barrel of laughs, but rather they are thoughtful, well written, and original.

"The Fifth Woman" starts out with the murders in Africa of 4 nuns and a female visitor. The rest of the novel takes place with these murders' ramifications in Sweden where a serial killer is dispatching men, each very differently. The title refers not only to the 5th woman murdered in Africa, but also the 5th woman in Sweden who leads police inspector, Kurt Wallander, to the Swedish serial murderer.

American police procedurals tend to reveal more murder motives from the get-go. In this novel the motive is a core plot element and isn't revealed until later in the book. The reader also knows a few things about the killer early in the book that the police don't know and it is fascinating to watch the police reach the "same place in the book" as the reader. I was reading a well regarded American mystery writer and stopped the book to read "The Fifth Woman". When I returned to the American book after finishing Mankell's opus, it was sophmoric in comparison. This is a book for the serious mystery reader and well worth the effort.

Henning Mankell really nails you to your reading chair from page one with his subtle and quiet horror stories where there is a minimum of the graphical violence you so often see in American thrillers these days. Mankell has an ingenius way of building up his stories which will keep you mystified till the end. He is also weaving into the fabric a honest description of Sweden on the social level and of how police work is developing in the Scandinavian countries. You get to like this Wallander and his Swedish colleagues so much that you are sad when the last page is turned.

If you like police procedurals with real people instead of a plot with cardboard characters, Henning Mankell is your guy. His detective Kurt Wallander is a likeable, middle-aged fellow with various personal and family problems, plus having to unravel a really nasty murder. It takes the entire book to to do, and I was totally surprised at how the thing was resolved. Along the way, the story conveys something of the feel and spirit of Sweden, or at least the author's version of it. A point that amused me, as an American accustomed to cops who shoot first and think about it later, is the Swedes' awkwardness when having to find their pistols and go after a nasty character. I've read three of the Wallander books, and all are engrossing throughout. The author composes in Swedish, but the translations are uniformly good, at least as far as this non-Swede can tell.

This is a fairly straightforward story: an elderly couple are brutally murdered, and through sheer determination, and a bit of good luck, the police, headed by the central character Kurt Wallander, solve the crime. As you'd expect.

It's well done though, in a Scandinavian sort of way. It's not just that the action takes place in and around Ystad in Sweden. There's a definite feeling of Scandinavian calm about the novel, despite the subject matter. And also a suggestion of the often supposed, though rarely true in my experience, Scandinavian seriousness, graveness, literalness, whatever.

Some of that may be down to the translation. At times the writing has an almost childlike quality to it; or perhaps it's just a "matter-of-fact-ness". It's not unappealing.

What Mankell is good at is making you feel the chilly Swedish landscape. Ever-threatening is the weather, closing around the police as they close around the killers. It's like the elements are in league with the criminals sometimes, and it gives the book quite a creepy feeling.

Mankell doesn't pay much attention to the other characters in the book; Wallander is the main man. But Wallander's crumbling personal life is described quite well, and threatens to derail his life constantly. The way he pulls through the problems of the murders, the weather and his personal life, to succeed, is perhaps the central attraction and theme of Faceless Killers.

A good read. And quite an easy read. But nonetheless satisfying.

I read in a Times review that Wallander bore similarities to Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus. Well, having read just this one Wallander novel I can say that they both drink rather a lot, they both seem to find themselves getting involved in the action and wandering around with an increasing number of cuts and bruises. Broader comparisons between Mankell and Rankin can also be made. They are both gritty writers of crime fiction. This is a far cry from murdered vicars in quaint villages. Having never read a book set in Sweden before I was able to learn something of the climate, the landscape, and the 'asylum-seekers situation'. In other words, Mankell sets the scene well just as Rankin builds an incredible portrait/landscape of Edinburgh. There is a sober realism about Mankell's writing. The dialogue has no frills but is not empty of humour. Wallander's character is well-developed although at this stage many of the other detectives do seem to merge into one. Just like Inspector Rebus, he is clearly useless at relationships. His wife has recently left him, his daughter survived a suicide attempt and has now run away. He makes a groping lunge at a married lawyer during the course of this book and comes off with a stinging cheek. Yet, just like Rebus, we sympathize with him. We admire his determination to solve the horrific case of a murdered, tortured elderly couple in a small village. At this point though my positive comparison with the Rebus novels ends. The plot of Faceless Killers is much more simplistic than Rankin's novels. Rankins is able to interweave a myriad of storylines and events. 'Faceless Killers' has two or three plotlines at most. Rankin usually offers us the chance to see a variety of perspectives other than that of Rebus. Mankell sticks to Wallander almost the whole time, with the exception of the opening scene. Strangest to me was the way in which the first three-quarters of the book is held down tightly to the space of only a few days and then suddenly months pass by with the crime unsolved. I won't go into this further for fear of spoiling the story but the ending is disappointing after maintaining the tension so well earlier on. I will probably give Mankell a second chance and read the next one in the series. It is a well-written book but I personally do not read that much crime fiction so am very demanding on what I do read in this genre. After Ian Rankin it is hard to be satisfied. However, if you are a voracious reader of crime stories this should definitely be given a reading.

I'm very sorry that I can't agree the other reviewers' praise.

First, I don't understand why the author set "Chapter One" in the beginning, in which an incident is described. Through chapter 2 to 7, cops run around to look for only "what occured", which all readers have already known, but the cops. So there's nothing suspenseful in these chapters. You'd better seal chapter 1 when you start reading, start from chapter 2 and complete chapter 7, then break the seal. I recommend this way.

Second, its coarseness or carelessness in details.
Though all chapters are full of oddness, just one example : At the last of chapter 15, WHY DOES THE BARTENDER KNOW THE RUSSIAN'S NAME ? Who let him know ? Does an ex-KGB agent introduce his real name here and there in his stealthy legwork ? ... And so on.

But I think the worst problem is its lack of constitency.

I think there are too many characters :
Only in Sweden side, there're Wallander, his daughter and dad, dad's fiancee Gertrud, Wallander's colleagues in Ystad, the Stockholm police, the Kalmar police, the victim, her family and acqintance, the stalker, the Russian villains, the assassin from South Africa, and so on (in addition to them, there're many South African side characters).

And it seems that Mankell failed to manage all of them simultaneously, or gave up it. Only who spotlit act something, only when they're focused on. The rest in backstage keep silence, wait for their turn, doing nothing. It seems fatally strange, especially when considering police works. So the constitency had gone somewhere, only Wallander and the evil are chasing each other, like a slapstick. Accidents occur unbelievably fortunately, or coincidentally, without any foreshadow, helping the author.

Of course it's a fiction, but to be honest, it made me imagine something like an amateur theatrical ... to my regret.

In fact it's gripping enough that it's possible to ignore much of the time that one's credulity is being strained. The first chapter has to be one of the great stereotype-busting moments in all crime fiction, featuring as it does Louise Akerblom, an estate agent of near-saintly honesty and goodness. Sadly, however, she doesn't last long as Russian psycho Konovalenko, the bad guy's bad guy, suddenly appears to blow her brains out on p. 9.

Along comes Inspector Wallander who is, at the outset, at a loss to make sense of this apparently quite pointless murder of a greatly loved young woman. But, slowly and tenaciously, he starts to dig and dig, moving ever closer to the discovery that Akerblom was killed for stumbling upon the activities of the agents of a fiendish South- African plot by highly placed Afrikers of far right political affiliation to derail the de Klerk-Mandela talks with a act of political assassination that will plunge their country into a bloodbath of racial violence, thereby wiping out any further possibility of a peaceful and negotiated end to Apartheid.

The story is told from two ends, Swedish and South African, and from the multiple perspectives of, inter alia, Victor Mabasha, the contract killer Konovalenko is training to carry out the assassination, of Jan Kleyn, the arch plotter, of Pieter van Heerden and Georg Scheepers the South Africans investigating the plotters on behalf of de Klerk, of de Klerk and Mandela themselves, but of course above all from the perspective of Wallander himself, increasingly obsessed and, as the story unfolds, ever closer to breakdown. Part of his problem may be that he has to get through the whole story without any love interest to sustain him, though his complex relationships with his father and daughter and his old friend Sten Widen sustain at least the reader.

The Swedish end of the story starts out as a rather satisfying mystery before turning halfway through into a slightly less satisfying thriller as Wallender and Konovalenko play cat and mouse. It is certainly gripping, page-turning stuff but one cannot help feeling, with Wallander's colleague Svedberg (on p. 337), that: "It was all too much for a little police district like Ystad."

The former white rulers decide that Nelson Mandela must be killed: the ensuing chaos would help them to regain power. They form the "Komitee" and hire the professional black killer Mabasha to do the job. Mabasha is trained in Sweden by the former KGB officer Konovalenko, who kills a woman. Thus the case lands in the lap of Inspector Kurt Wallander.

Obviously, the action now shifts to South Africa, with Wallander in hot investigative pursuit. And, of course, there will be a perfect ending.

One might question why a Swedish cop investigates a major political Problem in South Africa. Don't they have competent cops there? But much more irritating is Mankells political bias. He, who lives in Mozambique, misses no occasion to champion the black cause and to nigrate the white people. That has no place in a mystery.

Välskriven och spännande deckare, med en delvis okonventionell intrig. Den som läst de tidigare böckerna om Wallander kan dock finna vissa upprepningar, som blir tråkiga i längden och som tar ner betyget en aning.

I love the other books of the series but this one is not as good. I noticed a couple of mistakes in the plot like when Wallendar cut his knee in one of the last chapters and then there was no mention to that again in the rest of the book, or when he was paying a hotel and noticed he had enough money to spent more days but a few minutes later he had no money to pay for gasoline and then at the end he changed money..I was just confused specially because the other books are flawless...

The Berlin Wall has fallen and the East is opening up. An Inflatable dinghy drifts ashore in Sweden, and with it two dead men. It becomes Inspector Wallander's case. Who are these two men? Their dental work suggests east European origin; the dinghy was made in Yugoslavia. Wallander keeps digging, and his investigation leads him to Riga.

City and country of Intrigue, deception, corruption and murder. Willander is like the ivory ball on a billiard table, pushed in one direction and rebounding in an other. He solves the case, at great danger to himself.

Mankell has a habit of inserting his political convictions into his books - be it the sorry welfare state of Sweden, be it the flowers of evil blooming in the newly liberated East. I do not believe that a mystery should be the dais for politics.

One of the previous reviewers mentioned that "Dogs of Riga" might be difficult for Americans because of its pervasive 'Scandinavian gloom'. True, I think, but what makes this novel even more unsettling is the thick, murky atmostphere of mistrust and suspicion depicted in the countries of Eastern
Europe in the early 1990's. It is difficult for Americans to empathize with the fear and suspicion of those times, which is the setting of this novel. The repressive and grim background is indeed the leading force in the novel: it is a force which still impacts life in much of the Eastern Bloc today, accompanied by suspicion and corruption.

Against that setting, then, the characters assume heroic proportions. The desire of Wallander to do his job well and bring closure to the deaths, the courage of Major Liepa to confront corruption, and the passion of Baiba Liepa to revenge the murder of her husband--all assume epic dimensions when viewed against the social backdrop. The plot is thickened by the lies, fear, and deceit by which even the ordinary citizen must survive. The labyrinth is constructed with masterful prose and an observant eye, hallmarks of Mankell's craft as a writer.

"Dogs of Riga" is a classic of the genre. More complex and better crafted than the typical police procedural, it is a 'must read' for the epicurean mystery reader.