Firewall

Rating:
Summary: Complex and detailed thriller
Review: There are two primary plot lines in Firewall--a potential crime and the personal life of Inspect Wallandar, the police lead on the case. Mankell's smooth writing allows the reader to keep pace with a detailed plot. The introduction of new characters into the story is always well timed, in that they continue to hold the reader's interest and are congruent with the the story line.

Inspecter Wallandar is a very human police inspector, struggling with loneliness, job anxiety, and retirement at some point in the future. His reflections on his personal relationships and career transcend both age and nationality.

The translation of this book from Swedish is appears to be seamless and is easy to understand with apparently no loss of local color. This is the first Inspector Wallandar book I have read, and is good enough to entice me to seek out the others.

Rating:
Summary: Brannvegg
Review: This book is very different from 'Sidetracked'. There, the first 100 pages were filled with Wallender's repeated introspections, so that the book only took off after that. I read this book partly while visiting S. Sweden. However, I must state that the occurence so many murders so fast in Ystad in the book contrasted sharply with the nice reality of street life and cafe atmosphere in Ystad in July! The old town (gammlebyen) is surprisingly large, not so many like it are left in Scandinavia.

This book is highly recommendable, really takes off from the start. It makes references in the beginning to two of Wallender's earlier cases, Sidetracked and Hunde von Riga, and with all of Wallender's complaints about health and his colleagues foreshadows his coming retirement. I read in a German article this summer that Mankell lives in Africa and soon will replace the Wallender series with one where Wallender's daughter 'stars'.

This review is based on the Norwegian translation 'Brannvegg'.

Rating:
Summary: Really, really, really good...but a quick ending
Review: This was my first Wallender mystery and I am totally hooked. I absolutely couldn't put it down. The story flies along and the plot turns are so very interesting! Mankell really knows how to tell a mystery story; some details are important, others aren't, so that the reader is truly guessing the whole time. New twists and events pop up so quickly that (as I already said) it's hard to stop reading!

The protagonist is a complex, intriguing, drinks a lot of coffee, mixes big-deal police incidents with getting his car fixed, etc. so that he seems very real.

My only complaint, and maybe this is just Mankell's style, is that here we have a plot zipping along at a fast pace, and then you all of a sudden you're through the climax and the book's over. The End. Maybe I'm too accustomed to the Hollywood crescendo but the climax really caught me by surprise, left me saying "that's it?" Plot-wise it was pleasantly satisfying, wrapping up what needed to be, and was clever enough, lengthy denoument even, but it just could have used some extra buildup or suspense right at the end.

Other than that...this is the best book I've read in awhile. Interesting, suspenseful, great techno thriller plot, complex characters. If you're looking for a new author here's one to try.

Rating:
Summary: A thriller with psychological depth
Review: What a relief it is to read a modern thriller/police procedural whose characters seem real. Mankell's protagonist, Swedish police officer Kurt Wallander, is not a super-hero who outwits and outfights legions of bad guys. Nor is he as phenomenally lucky as the heros in many American thrillers. Wallander, a dedicated cop, has a believable internal life. His real-world personal problems include loneliness, distance from his adult daughter, and a threat to his position from an ambitious younger officer. His horrendously long hours make him feel exhausted; he gets frustrated with baffling evidence and failed plans. Yet he persists in trying to understand the connections between the deaths he is investigating. Different pieces of the puzzle appear at well-paced intervals during the story. There are surprises that don't fit theories. The conspiracy that emerges turns out to reach far beyond local events. Though the chief villain gets nailed at the end of the book, Mankell does not wrap things up in a neat package. The threat is still out there.

Subsidiary themes of the book include the vulnerability of our technological society, and resentment of the growing concentration of wealth. There are a few problems. Many of the Swedish names sound alike, making it difficult to separate some policemen and policewomen from others. Mankell's writing, translated from Swedish, sometimes produces short, choppy sentences. There is a peculiar fixation on checking the time. Nonetheless, this book rises far above most mysteries.

Rating:
Summary: Too many loose ends in the end!
Review: When I read a thriller or crime story I do not expect much, but I do expect that the mysteries are unveiled, the riddles solved and everything makes some kind of sense in the end. Unfortunately this expectation remains unsatisfied by this book. The last chapter (40) is basically a record of all those questions that remain unanswered for eternity. It is fair to say that I feel cheated somehow, because all those parts were used throughout the book to keep my attention and were used to generate the thrill and suspense in the first place. Rarely felt so disappointed! (The story itself was not bad until chapter 40...)

Rating:
Summary: This puzzle fits too well
Review: While the book is fairly enjoyable and a quick read, I found the characters to be, for the most part, two dimensional, and the dialogue to be stilted (perhaps due something to the translation). Also, too many disparate things occur that fit together in the end. However, it is interesting to read about police work and the legal system in a different country (Sweden) and how in what ways it is similar to (and different from) the U.S. One minor quibble which I often find in these kind of books is that one would think that where the evidence strongly suggests a far-reaching world-wide conspiracy, the main character would call in the "cavalry" much sooner.