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.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Kurt Wallander. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Kurt Wallander. Sort by date Show all posts
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
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
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
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Hakan Nesser - Borkmann's Point
review by Malcolm Martland on show 29th September 2011
When I saw the title of this book, I thought it sounded a little bit like a New World Cabernet Sauvignon, or perhaps a wine from South East Australia.
From the cover:
Borkmann’s point was hardly a rule; in fact, it was more of a comment, a landmark for tricky cases . . . In every investigation, he maintained, there comes a point beyond which we don’t really need any more information. When we reach that point, we already know enough to solve the case by means of nothing more than some decent thinking etc.
My review.
I seem to be reading more and more Nordic Noir these days but far from the fraught and depressed Kurt Wallander Detective Chief Inspector van Veeteren enjoys a leisurely afternoon with wine and pastries or cake a game of chess with a colleague a pleasant walk by the sea. In this novel he's on holiday by the seaside with his son who is on parole from prison for drugs offences. He is not getting onto well with the relationship and wishes he was back at work when there is a murder in a nearby town and he is offered the chance to extend his holiday and go and help out floundering local police force.
It transpires that the latest murder is the second of a similar type. The victim staggering home late from the pub one might is attacked by a mad axemen who almost severs his head. Van Veeteren quickly makes himself at home in a comfortable hotel and acquaints himself with the local chief of police who is shortly to retire. They get on famously and start to make serious inroads into the police chief's massive ancient fine wine store! Then there is a third attack this time a young doctor who is discovered by his girlfriend lying in a pool of blood in the hallway of their apartment but this time with the axe left embedded in his back.
Witness statements pour in and the Department is overloaded with information and van Veeteren is left to ponder over the information between his high teas and Danish pastries.
Then a woman detective is kidnapped and things hot up a bit. Van Veeteren finds himself a witness having seen her going for a run only shortly before. But of course he solves the whole mystery before local police chief, and fellow chessplayer, retires. Van Veeteren probably goes back to his hotel and rewards himself with a glass of beer and maybe some bratwurst before having a nice dinner somewhere, he "could think of no better companion than a good meal".
Although these mysteries don't have the hard edge of the Wallander novels I find myself enjoying them and am now on my third!
Malcolm Martland broadcast on RadioScilly 107.9 FM, 29 September 2011
When I saw the title of this book, I thought it sounded a little bit like a New World Cabernet Sauvignon, or perhaps a wine from South East Australia.
From the cover:
Borkmann’s point was hardly a rule; in fact, it was more of a comment, a landmark for tricky cases . . . In every investigation, he maintained, there comes a point beyond which we don’t really need any more information. When we reach that point, we already know enough to solve the case by means of nothing more than some decent thinking etc.
My review.
I seem to be reading more and more Nordic Noir these days but far from the fraught and depressed Kurt Wallander Detective Chief Inspector van Veeteren enjoys a leisurely afternoon with wine and pastries or cake a game of chess with a colleague a pleasant walk by the sea. In this novel he's on holiday by the seaside with his son who is on parole from prison for drugs offences. He is not getting onto well with the relationship and wishes he was back at work when there is a murder in a nearby town and he is offered the chance to extend his holiday and go and help out floundering local police force.
It transpires that the latest murder is the second of a similar type. The victim staggering home late from the pub one might is attacked by a mad axemen who almost severs his head. Van Veeteren quickly makes himself at home in a comfortable hotel and acquaints himself with the local chief of police who is shortly to retire. They get on famously and start to make serious inroads into the police chief's massive ancient fine wine store! Then there is a third attack this time a young doctor who is discovered by his girlfriend lying in a pool of blood in the hallway of their apartment but this time with the axe left embedded in his back.
Witness statements pour in and the Department is overloaded with information and van Veeteren is left to ponder over the information between his high teas and Danish pastries.
Then a woman detective is kidnapped and things hot up a bit. Van Veeteren finds himself a witness having seen her going for a run only shortly before. But of course he solves the whole mystery before local police chief, and fellow chessplayer, retires. Van Veeteren probably goes back to his hotel and rewards himself with a glass of beer and maybe some bratwurst before having a nice dinner somewhere, he "could think of no better companion than a good meal".
Although these mysteries don't have the hard edge of the Wallander novels I find myself enjoying them and am now on my third!
Malcolm Martland broadcast on RadioScilly 107.9 FM, 29 September 2011
Monday, 5 April 2010
show 1st April 2010
My guests today are: Malcolm Martland, Babs Simpson, Maggie Perkovic & unfortunately no Brian Lowen as he’s gone to the mainland so we won’t hear his review of Peter James ‘The Truth’ today. Well this is the show before Easter weekend, what are you guys doing, do you still buy easter eggs/chocolate? With Friday, Monday and the weekend off I look forward to sitting down with my head in a book…..maybe a cuppa tea and a bit of chocci to go with it tho. I’ve gotta say Malcolm, its thanks to you that I started to read the first in the trilogy of Stieg Larsson (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) thank you very much, I have been engrossed in it, it’s a thinking persons crime thriller, I don’t want it to end!!
Anyway, stick around and listen to the reviews of Kurt Wallander, Rachel Hore (that’s spelt Hore), and Joanna Trollope, plus if we have time a Harlan Coben.
I will be looking at those top 10 books of the decade too, so join us after the ads and the weather on the bookshow .
Whats in the bestsellers today - well top three are Stieg Larsson!
Malcolm & Babs favourite 'Love reading book of the decade': The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and Maggies was: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
Anyway, stick around and listen to the reviews of Kurt Wallander, Rachel Hore (that’s spelt Hore), and Joanna Trollope, plus if we have time a Harlan Coben.
I will be looking at those top 10 books of the decade too, so join us after the ads and the weather on the bookshow .
Whats in the bestsellers today - well top three are Stieg Larsson!
Malcolm & Babs favourite 'Love reading book of the decade': The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and Maggies was: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
Sunday, 20 April 2014
Peter May - Entry Island
Review by Sue Majors read live on bookshow April 2014
By the writer of the Lewis Trilogy, this is another enjoyable
quality novel. Peter May has managed to combine beautiful writing ....poetic at
times ...with an intriguing murder mystery, this time set in Canada.
Entry Island has at its centre Sime Mackenzie, a Montreal detective with
Scottish roots not surprisingly on Lewis.he is another detective in the sad
lonely vein of Kurt Wallander and Harry Hole, but is nevertheless a believable
character ...and I warmed to him right away.
The setting and time move between Entry island in the St Lawrence river,
and Lewis at the time of the highland clearances. My knowledge of the clearances
was sketchy, and this book gives you a full flavour of the terrible treatment
meted out to islanders at the time.
Sime is sent to investigate a murder...the first anyone can remember on
Entry island...and it is there that he meets the prime suspect, feeling oddly
that he has seen her before.
Once I got used to the time slips in the story I really enjoyed this book.
Peter May is a writer who has been new to me in the last six months but I shall
read more of his work....he's a great talent.
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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
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
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