You might say “surely that is to be expected in a police procedural” - but that contemplation of mortality comes even before the Lövgrens are found. In the first four pages of this book there are four references to death. The problem is this game would kill most readers in short order. Once, on Facebook, I suggested a Kurt Wallander drinking game, where the reader takes a sip every time the author comments on life’s fleeting nature or whenever the text revels in melancholy. In short order a refugee facility is set on fire and an innocent Somali man is gunned down, leaving Wallander and his team with two cases to solve. The possibility that the vicious double murder was the work of two foreigners is just the sort of provocation xenophobes would seize as justification for lashing out at the strangers amongst the Swedes. There is considerable anxiety in Sweden over the swelling numbers of immigrants and refuge seekers attracted by Sweden’s liberal social policies. The revelations provide possible lines of investigation but also underline the rot hidden under Sweden’s deceptively pleasing facade.Īn already intractable case is further complicated when Maria’s final words are leaked to the press. Johannes has his secrets, such as war profiteering and infidelity. The problem with flipping rocks for a living is what you find under rocks. If they are indeed foreign killers with no obvious connection to the Lövgrens, the case will be that much harder to resolve. Maria’s last words and the knot around her neck suggest the killers were not Swedish. The detectives hope to find something in the victims’ private lives that will suggest why they were targeted. They closely examine the Lövgrens’ lives, with particular emphasis on Johannes, as he was the main focus of the attack. Without Maria Lovgren to point the way, Wallander and his team - Hansson, Martinsson, Naslund, Peters, Rydberg, and Svedberg - are forced to fall back on conventional, time-consuming police work. The old woman dies having said only one word with any possible relevance to the killers: the word “foreign”. There is some hope that the survivor will be able to tell the police who attacked her and her husband, or at least why explain why they were targeted, Hope is dashed. Maria is barely clinging to life after the attack. Wallander’s disposition is in no way aided by the human depravity his job forces him to confront every day, depravity like the brutal attack on Johannes and Maria Lövgren that left the old farmer noseless and beaten to death. Wallander is painfully aware that middle age is transforming him into a doughy old man he is worried about his hostile and increasing senile father he is alienated from his daughter and his wife of many years just left him because living with Wallander was killing her soul. Murray, Faceless Killers introduces Kurt Wallander, a morose Swedish policeman. We'll see how far I get.First published in 1991 under the title Mördare utan ansikte, and translated in 1997 by Stephen T. As a meandering point of interest, other police procedural-related items I would like to get to from there include finishing the Dragon Tattoo trilogy and its TV and movie productions, continuing with the Law & Order seasons, maybe Hill Street Blues, and eventually the Jack Webb empire, including especially Adam-12. So my plan now is on to the rest of them. Faceless Killers might be the one to read if you only read one. It seemed far away and imaginary when I wrote my 2012 review and so much more starkly real now. It features vigilante white nationalist groups killing immigrants, especially immigrants of color, for the sake of terror. But I did not find it boring at all-in fact, it was even more interesting with its themes of immigrant tensions and hostilities. I worried about that, circling back to Faceless Killers again to consider going through Mankell's 11 or so Kurt Wallander tomes. As a curious aside, I saw an interview with Maj Sjöwall from about 2014 (as I recall), in which she stated flatly that she found Henning Mankell boring. When I remembered the influence McBain had on Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, the path to Nordic noir became more clear. Then an Amazon deal opened up most of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series to me in a convenient way. ![]() Wallander is a police detective in a small city in southern Sweden, his stories set mostly in the '90s. Early on, because 10 years ago they were everywhere you looked, I flailed at Nordic noir in the form of Stieg Larsson's so-called (so-translated) Girl With the Dragon Tattoo novels (the first two, never made it to the third), and then the false start at Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels. One I've been gnawing at for some time is the police procedural, mainly in fiction but some on TV and at the movies too. Full disclosure, my blog is littered with abandoned projects.
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