Book Review - Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

This is the first of the Wallander books - I knew of the character, but had never read any of the books though I had seen several episodes of the TV series (the BBC version) and I'd promised myself I would check out the books one day. And so this week I picked up the paperback from my towering TBR pile and vanished between the pages.

It's a very dark book and Wallander is a brooding character. There's not much joy in this book - everyone's so miserable, and the main character seems to enjoy wallowing in misery. Mind you he doesn't have much to smile about - he lives alone, eats nothing but junk food, and loses sleep because he's always dreaming of a beautiful black woman. On top of all that he has to cope with the fact that his father is slipping into the clutches of dementia.

It takes awhile for the book to get going, but when it does the pace really picks up and for all his flaws Wallander is a compelling character. The plot sees the detective investigating a brutal double murder of an elderly couple and touches on hard hitting subjects such as racism and xenophobia. These latter points make the book as topical as a newspaper headline.

Noric Noir is the current thing, and this book, this series rather is considered to be a blueprint for the genre. I'll certainly be checking out more in the series - in fact I plan to read them in order and have already downloaded the second in the series to my Kindle. I guess when I've read more of the books I'll know how typical or atypical this book is of the genre itself. All in all I enjoyed this book and am glad I dipped my toe into the Wallander series.