Kurt
Wallander
Faceless
Killers
by
Henning Mankell
304
pages, Vintage
Review
by Pat Black
The
first Wallander story, Faceless Killers,
appeared in 1991, but its themes might have dated from the past fortnight.
The
Swedish inspector’s first published case is a murder at a remote farmhouse, which
sees an elderly man and his wife battered and garrotted by one or more
intruders.
The
only clue is revealed in the chilling opening chapter after a kindly neighbour realises
the couple haven’t followed their usual routine, and arrives just in time to
hear the dying wife’s last word:
“Foreigners.”
Heading
the police inquiry is Kurt Wallander. Try not to roll your eyes, now (or eye,
if you only have one): he’s in crisis, his wife having left him, and his
daughter – who survived a suicide attempt - doesn’t speak to him. He drinks,
and sometimes gets in his car afterwards. He is perhaps not best suited to such
a high-pressure, responsible job.
Hmm.
Any character tics or foibles? Yep, of the Morse-y variety: he listens to opera
on cassette tapes.
I’ve
noticed Scandie Noir detectives are bang into their pastries and coffee, and
Wallander is no exception. At time of writing, this doesn’t half put me in the
mood for pastries and coffee. I imagine the writers, tucking into pastries and
coffee as they type – about pastries and coffee - chuckling as they imagine
their readers also tucking into pastries and coffee, or wishing they could. It
is a curious metaphysical symbiosis, akin to someone reading Bukowski poetry
about getting blootered in a pub, composed when he was blootered in a pub,
while they themselves are getting blootered in a pub.
Wallander
is horrified by the crime. It’s seemingly without motive, and there are no
witnesses. But matters take an even more sinister turn when the dying wife’s
last words are leaked to the public.
In
the context of the story, Sweden has been taking in refugees in great numbers,
and this has already caused tensions among the established population. So the
idea of “foreigners” coming to Sweden and slaughtering an old couple ignites
nasty, white supremacist tendencies.
Wallander
is warned in a series of anonymous phone calls that “something will be done
soon unless you catch them”. Something is done – first, a cardboard village is
torched, and then a black refugee is executed at random, in cold blood, his
head blown off with a shotgun.
So
our hero has two major inquiries to sort out – the double killing at the
farmhouse, and then the asylum seeker’s shooting – and all while his boss is on
holiday.
The
late Henning Mankell wrote this book as a response to similar tensions affecting
Sweden in 1990. Their parallels with the present day are all too clear.
Mankell
was aghast at the racism which emerged in Sweden in response to the influx of
refugees. At the same time, he advocated controlled immigration, rather than
doors flung open to just anyone. On the face of it, that’s a common sense
approach - except I’m not sure that the latter scenario marks the actual truth.
“They’re just letting anyone in” sounds a bit like a myth spewed out at the pub
by a boozed-up farmer who doesn’t live within five miles of anyone non-white –
and he’ll tell you he still thinks Brexit is a good idea, while he’s at it.
Whatever
the case, this is a view that Wallander shares, and makes explicit in the book.
His
investigation, much like any real-life inquiry, is a methodical, logical
process; speaking to witnesses, finding discrepancies in stories and tracking
down Persons of Interest. Wallander is led down a few blind alleys, but by and
large he follows reasoned steps to find his killers. He even gets a couple of
action scenes - one while on stakeout, another as he chases down some bad guys.
I
liked the procedural element. There are few if any credibility-stretching leaps
of logic disguised as insight, and a wilful rejection of the guess-the-killer
card game of most whodunnits. With detective stories, there’s a constant
tension between a realistic depiction of police work and the need to create an
engaging puzzle. Wallander is more on the side of the nitty-gritty than many of
his contemporaries.
Wallander
also tries to seduce his district’s new chief prosecutor. She’s a young,
ambitious woman who rattles his cage with her attitude – read “competence” – before
haunting his daydreams. He is punching well above his weight, here. It comes
across as some last-beer-in-the-crate fantasy of a middle-aged,
bang-out-of-shape man; the delusion that the good looking woman in the office
wants his body.
It
seems doubtful that anyone would want Wallander’s body - he is a mess,
dishevelled, hung over most of the time, just about clinging to the cliff-face
of life. Why a married, accomplished woman would want to get mixed up with someone
who screams “loser” at you from a long way off is anyone’s guess, but we
probably all know cases where this has happened.
This
encounter was problematic as Wallander initially forces himself on her. He
does, thankfully, take no for an answer, but even at a gap of nigh-on 30 years,
I think he’d end up in trouble in real life for this. Eventually, though, he
succeeds.
Maybe
I’m a little bit too uptight on this score. Perhaps it’s all down to that
mythologised Scandinavian openness over matters of the flesh. I once asked a
Swedish person I studied with if this tabloid aspect of his national character had
any basis in truth, and he assured me it did. Well, you would say that. There are
some national stereotypes that people enjoy living up to. Like if you had a
national trait that championed hard drinking or proficiency at violence; some
folk would rather this assumption was made about them on first impressions than
not.
Whatever
the case, I thought Wallander was a wee bit out of line.
There
are some fascinating side-characters, including a hard-working lieutenant who
does a lot of the spade work for Wallander. This was true to life, as real
murder investigations can use dozens of officers making hundreds of inquiries, and
not just one maverick gumshoe on his own, eating pastries and drinking coffee,
on a hangover.
I
was intrigued by Wallander’s father, who lives on his own and suffers from
dementia. I felt sure there was Meaning to be found in the old man. He’s an
artist, famous for painting the same scene and figures, over and over again.
The old boy, who lives alone, has taken to downing his paintbrushes and
wandering off into the background, in one case vanishing for a day before the
authorities pick him up.
Wallander
is worried sick for his dad, and knows the time will come when a hard decision
must be taken.
Should
we read something into this? Should we see a more romantic notion of Swedish
life and society grown corrupt, become sad and dysfunctional?
Even
if you choose to read nothing into it, Wallander’s first case is worth checking
out.
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