Henning Mankell – The Man from Bejing

review by showhost

In a quiet village in Sweden the police discover 19 bodies which have been brutally slaughtered.

Judge Birgitta Roslin, a Swedish judge in a nearby town, takes an interest in the case when she realised that her mother was adopted by one of the murdered couple.

The story steps back to the early 19^thCentury and a poor Chinese family who’s 3 sons leave their poor village to find work.  They are brutally treated whilst working on the building of the railroads in Americas and only 1 survives.  He keeps a diary and this diary is read by a present day dynasty owner.  This owner is linked to a Chinese takeover of Zimbabwe which involves President Mugabe.

The murders in the village are all linked by a thin thread and the judge finds her life in danger when she goes to Bejing and starts asking questions and showing a picture from a CCTV camera.

I never did find out what the thin thread was nor the reason for the murder other than a revenge but why them?  Also, what was the red ribbon all about??  Started off with promise but became tedious.

Henning Mankell - The Pyramid

review by Maloclm on show 10th March
From the back cover: When Kurt Wallander first appeared in Faceless Killers back in 1990, he was a senior police officer, just turned forty, with his life in a mess. His wife had left him, his father barely acknowledged him; he ate badly and drank alone at night.

The Pyramid chronicles the events that led him to such a place. We see him in the early years, doing hours on the beat whilst trying to solve a murder off-duty; witness the beginnings of his fragile relationship with Mona, the woman he has his heart set on marrying; and learn the reason behind his difficulties with his father. These thrilling tales provide a fascinating insight into Wallander’s character, and demand to be read in one sitting. From the stabbing of a neighbour in 1969 to a light aircraft accident in 1989, every story is a vital piece of the Wallander series, showing Mankell at the top of his game. Featuring an introduction from the author, The Pyramid is an essential read for all fans of Kurt Wallander.

My review: I first started reading Henning Mankell’s Wallander books around the time the Steig Larsson Millennium Trilogy was released in English – the BBC were also showing adaptation of several of Mankell’s stories with Kenneth Brannagh as Kurt Wallander – and I was hooked on what has been termed the Nordic Noir genre. Henning Mankell decided after eight volumes of the gloomy, bad tempered, heavy drinking and depressive but of course brilliant detective – he sounds a bit like Rankin’s Rebus – to put together the ideas he had before the first novel – to show how Wallander went from a rookie to one of the leading Swedish fictional detectives.

Being short stories they are all a little different – but the style is similar – not surprisingly the first is Wallander’s First Case – set in Malmo – and he has just seen Mona, his future wife off on the hydrofoil ferry to Copenhagen – a short trip to the Danish capital. The story also introduces his eccentric father, a shambling artist who always paints the same picture, and who deeply resents his son being a policeman. In the entire series we never quite find out why but Kurt is left forever feeling guilty about not having given his dad enough time during his life – aren’t we all?

Wallander is in uniform in the story but eager to become a detective. As chance – or the author - would have it he is resting in his apartment when he hears a shot – his neighbour, a retired sailor, has apparently shot himself. The crime squad investigates and wonders what he, a uniformed officer, is doing there. He is almost brushed aside but after the apartment is burnt out in an arson attack he personally investigates the case and accredits himself well – his career as a detective has begun.

By the last of the collection of stories he has been married and separated from his wife Mona, had a daughter Linda and moved to the Ystad police department on the southern coast of Sweden and some miles east of Malmo. The Pyramid is the final story and is almost a full length adventure about a covert airplane flight which crashes on a drug drop. Wallander of course solves the crime despite carrying the emotional gloom, apparently of the entire nation on his shoulders!

Publisher: Vintage RRP £7.99 Amazon £4.90 Kindle £4.66
Malcolm Martland, Broadcast on Radio Scilly 107.9 FM Book Club, 10 March 2011.

Arnaldur Indridason - Hypothermia

review by Malcolm on show 27th Jan
I think Linda chose me to read this because of my avid reading of Nordic Noir – the likes of Steig Larsson, Henning Mankell and more recently Jo Nesbo. In contrast to Nesbo’s Snowman I thoroughly enjoyed this novel – I felt it captured my perceived images of Iceland well, the plot developed nicely and the writing and translation style was easy to read even if people and names were sometimes a little unfamiliar.

Anyway from the back cover:

“One cold autumn night, a woman is found hanging from a beam at her holiday cottage. At first sight, it appears like a straightforward case of suicide; María had never recovered from the death of her mother two years previously and she had a history of depression. But then the friend who found her body approaches Detective Erlendur with a tape of a séance that María attended before her death and his curiosity is aroused… etc.”

That’s from the cover. Of course it turns into a murder investigation and Detective Elendur finds out that Maria was obsessed with seeing her mother in the afterlife and with her Doctor husband’s assistance attempts a near death experience – but unknowingly her husband is having an affair with the Mystic from the séance – and all goes badly wrong for Maria. The author nicely ties up all the loose ends in Erlendur’s investigations, he solves the murder and finds the bodies of the missing boy and girl from the past – but he does not find what happened to his missing brother – I expect he will one day in another of the Reykjavik Murder Mysteries.

I highly recommend this and will certainly be reading more.

Malcolm F. Martland Broadcast on RadioScilly 107.9FM 27 January 2011

Jo Nesbo - The Snowman

Review by Malcolm on show 11th Nov.
This book is labelled as "the next Steig Larssen" but apart from being written by Scandinavian, there is little else to compare the two. It is a detective story through and through, led by the amusingly named Inspector Harry Hole and set in and around Oslo and Bergen. There are more comparisons to the Kurt Wallander novels of Henning Mankell, and but with none of the lugubrious analysis of Swedish nationalism that is so prevalent in Steig Larsson and Henning Mankell's novels.

The Snowman is the signature of the killer, so predictably, his murders only occur in winter. Sometimes the Snowman just contains or wears clues, but in one instance, it also bears the head of the victim perched neatly on the top. The victims are all women, women who have been unfaithful to their partners. In fact, the novel opens with a raunchy scene of just such a woman who has left her child in the car while she makes love to a man with no nipples! Therein lies the first clue, and of course she disappears. The next day, all remaining of her being a headscarf around the neck of the Snowman built outside her child's bedroom.



Harry Hole, whose life and household is in a total mess, is set to investigate these murders as he is the only Norwegian detective with any experience of serial killers. He is given the assistance of the newly appointed drop dead gorgeous detective Katrine Bratt from Bergen. But she is not all she seems!



Investigations into the spouses and children of the victims reveal that several children had been submitted to tests for a rare genetic disorder, one which results in a degenerative neurological condition, and coincidently, no nipples! And just to add a chill several victims' bodies appear in dissection tanks at the local anatomy school. I'm not sure how much of this, the author is making up but as a Carry On detective series, it's not bad.



But one piece of police procedure I cannot forgive the author for getting so badly wrong, unless they are just so slack in Norway that nobody notices. Some 11 years previously, two women had disappeared in Bergen and were assumed to have been victims of the Snowman. However, the investigating officer, the light fingered Gert Rafto aka Iron Rafto also disappeared without a trace. Then, 11 years later, when Harry Hole and Katrine Bratt, visit Bergen to investigate they find that Gert Rafto had a summer cabin on a small island, part of a police funded leisure scheme for officers. Harry and Katrine, take a trip out the cabin and in the cellar they find a freezer with a padlock on it. They break it open and outfalls the body of Gert Rafto frozen solid, like a snowman. His nose had been pulled off and replaced with a carrot and a row of black carpet tacks have been nailed his face in a grimace. There is no mention at all why the police did not investigate the property of an officer who disappeared so long ago, and property funded by the police as well. But none of the participants in the novel seem to bat an eyelid about this and carry on as if nothing was wrong with the fact that they've neglected their duties, all those years ago. My credibility began to get a little thin at this point. In addition, one by one suspects are found dead and proclaimed as the Snowman, although in reality, the Snowman minus nipples still lurks and Harry Hole rises to the challenge again, just in time to save his career for the next novel.

Malcolm F Martland, broadcast 11 November 2010 Radio Scilly 107.9 FM

Henning Mankell - The Man Who Smiled

Review by Malcolm Martland on show 1st April
The Man Who Smiled is the fourth Kurt Wallander mystery and is set in and around the southern Swedish town of Ystat. It was recently dramatised on the BBC with Kenneth Branagh playing Wallander. When I realised it was the same story I nearly gave up but decided to continue and there were significant differences in the written story. But most will be familiar to anyone who has seen it.

Wallander has been off sick for over a year, he had a breakdown after shooting a man during the course of his police work and took refuge in nearby Denmark. He intends to return to his old police station and resign his position but while walking on a beach he is approached by an old friend, a solicitor, who asks him to investigate the apparent accidental death of his father, also a solicitor. Wallander is unable to accept any commitment in his mental state and refuses. However, several days later he hears that his friend has been shot dead in his home. Filled with guilt and remorse he returns to his station not to resign but to resume, and to investigate the death of his friend and his father. A few feathers are ruffled by his return but eventually they all agree to work as a team.

He visits the solicitors' secretary and finds that the senior man had been visiting a wealthy client at Farnholm Castle and apparently had run off the road in fog on his way home. Wallander visits the scrapyard where the car was taken and finds a few clues including a chair with only three legs. He then goes the site of the accident and guess what? Buried in the mud he finds another leg of the chair, just the right sort of thing for bashing the old man on the head. His suspicions are up. Ballistics on the bullets found in the younger solicitor revealed them to be from an unusual and expensive Italian pistol. Clearly foul play is afoot. The secretary calls him, something has bothered her in the garden, Wallander sees a disturbed area on the lawn with something protruding, and as you do, he throws a telephone directory at it provoking an enormous explosion from the buried mine!

During the course of his further enquiries Wallander visits Farnholm Castle where a disgraced ex-policeman is on sentry duty. He learns that the owner of the castle, Dr Alfred Harderberg is an important and influential as well as a benevolent local businessman, "The Man Who Smiled".

While following up the clues found in the dead solicitors' offices Wallander finds he is being followed by a strange car. His fellow officer, Ann-Britt notes the car registration number and they discover that it has been stolen. But they continue their enquiries late into the night hoping they have shaken off the tail but after visiting potential witnesses Wallander notices that is petrol tank gauge seems to be higher than expected. They abandon their car and while waiting for forensic backup it explodes. Clearly someone is trying to tell Wallander something!

The team pull all stops out and while re-examining the elder solicitor's vehicle they find a plastic cool box, the sort used for transporting human organs. Suspicions of a grisly trade emerge and the fingers are pointing at Dr Alfred Harderberg but where is the evidence? Wallander plants a girl stable-hand at the castle and unexpectedly receives a tipoff from the disgraced ex-policeman and a gunshot riddled chase of helicopters, cars and planes begins.

All great stuff I thoroughly enjoyed it despite having seen it only a week before. We can never know what was lost in translation, it lacks the despair of the TV series, but nevertheless this is a great thriller akin to some of the best works of Ian Rankin and Val McDermid.

Malcolm Martland, RadioScilly Book Club, 1 April 2010