Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell (My Goodreads Review)

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ouch, I hate to say this BUT...

A very hard hitting and exceptionally violent murder story. OK, that will draw the reader in straight away. It is set in Sothern Sweden and the year is 1990. Inspector Wallander of Ystad Police Department must find the savage murderers of an old age couple on their isolated farm. The whole thing is very compelling.

As Wallander digs deep into the mystery we go on all sorts of twists and turns. It is splendidly written and I would advise anyone to read these Wallander stories.

I do, however, have one big axe to grind with this particular story. I obviously can’t say too much because of spoilers. The writer Henning Mankell focuses on a very emotive and much-discussed subject. It is commendable and brave to do this. However, I also wished the plot was not watered down by a counterplot of the opposite angle. It always happens that this type of subject must have a compulsory or secondary issue. It has to be brought in. It spoilt the story for me. I felt it was trying to appease the PC brigade. It is just a personal opinion of what was a rather well-written story. That is why I only gave an average mark despite the superior writing ability of Mankell's very good stories.

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Wallander - Swedish TV Crime Drama

There are some very good crime dramas in the UK and I'm a glutton for them. Especially Inspector Morse, plus the off shoots like Endeavour (set in the sixties when Morse was young) also Lewis set after the death of Morse. There are other dramas too, like Inspector Frost, Prime Suspect and George Gently. These are all great UK crime dramas.

Now we are beginning to see some great stories from other European countries too. One such crime drama is from Sweden and are TV dramatisations of the Henning Mankell's Wallander stories. They are very gripping. I did not like the English adaptation with Keneth Branagh playing Kurt Wallander. I just could not handle Swedish people walking about in Sweden speaking to each other in English.

However, the proper Swedish version with clear English sub-titles really did it for me. It stars Krister Henriksson as Kurt Wallander with the late Johanna Sallastrom as his daughter who is also a police officer in the Ystad police force. The stories are very gripping indeed. I bought the first seven stories on DVD making sure the sub-titles and all were there. I was glued to this real quality drama and ended up buying episodes 8 to 13 over the weekend.

If you like good crime drama then this Swedish production is very superior among such genres. It is definitely on a par with the good Brit dramas and I would strongly recommend this quality TV show.