Rating: 
Summary: MANKELL REIGNS!
Review: THE BEST CRIME-AUTHOR ALIVE TODAY! tHIS WAS THE VERY FIRST BOOK I READ OF HIM, AND I COULD HARDLY SLEEP AT NIGHT BECAUSE I BADLY WANTED TO KNOW HOW IT WOULD END. mANKELL ISN'T JUST WRITING A CRIME-STORY, HE IS ABOUT SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT. hE SAYS A LOT ABOUT LIFE, EVERYDAY PHILOSOPHY AND HUMANKIND IN GENERAL. hE KNOWS HOW PEOPLE WORKS, BUT HE DOESNT OVERDO IT. EVERYTHING HAS A SPECIAL ELEGANT TOUCH TO IT. HE DOESN'T SAY MORE THAN NECCESARY ABOUT THE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS, YET HE REALLY NAILS EACH OF THEM DOWN. THIS BOOK IS ACTUALLY A TRAGEDY, AND HANDLED BY ANOTHER AUTHOR IT COULD EASILY HAVE BEEN TOO MUCH. A KILLER IS HUNTING DOWN AND BRUTALLY KILLING PROMINENT CITIZENS IN THE SMALL CITY OF YSTAD, SWEDEN. A MOTIVE OR ANY WITNESSES ARE HARD TO FIND, AND CHIEF INSPECTOR WALLANDER IN THE YSTAD POLICE HAS TO WORK AROUND-THE-CLOCK IN ORDER TO CATCH THE CULPRIT. HE HAS TO OUTDO HIMSELF, AND PRESS HIMSELF AND HIS ALLIES IN THE POLICEFORCE TO THE MAXIMUM. THE ENDING? YOU WILL BE SURPRISED, AND MOVED, AND AT THE SAME TIME ALSO FEEL SOME REMORSE ON BEHALF OF THIS KILLER ... YOU WANT THE MURDERS TO HAVE AN END BUT TO UNDERSTAND THEM IS PERHAPS NOT TOO DIFFICULT EITHER... I WILL NOT SAY MORE. MANKELL DESCRIBES THE POLICE INTELLIGENCE-WORK WELL, ALTHOUGH YOU UNDERSTAND THAT HE DOESN'T FIND THAT PART THE MOST INTERESTING. WALLANDER AND HIS DEMONS IS THE CENTREFOLD OF THIS PLOT, TOGETHER WITH THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRIMINIAL MIND. READ IT! BE MOVED! AND PRAY THAT MANKELL WILL NEVER KILL HIS HIGHLY BELOVED CHIEF INSPECTOR! THAT WOULD BE A CRIME INDEED ...
Rating: 
Summary: South African Politics
Review: The former white rulers decide that Nelson Mandela must be killed: the ensuing chaos would help them to regain power. They form the "Komitee" and hire the professional black killer Mabasha to do the job. Mabasha is trained in Sweden by the former KGB officer Konovalenko, who kills a woman. Thus the case lands in the lap of Inspector Kurt Wallander.Obviously, the action now shifts to South Africa, with Wallander in hot investigative pursuit. And, of course, there will be a perfect ending. One might question why a Swedish cop investigates a major political Problem in South Africa. Don't they have competent cops there? But much more irritating is Mankells political bias. He, who lives in Mozambique, misses no occasion to champion the black cause and to nigrate the white people. That has no place in a mystery.
Rating:
Summary: Great reading
Review: The third book of Henning Mankell and his inspector Wallander. And again it is a great book to read. This time Wallander is confronted with a women who is shot without any apparent motive. From the beginning the reader knows what is going on: she was at the wrong time at the wrong place. The assassination of Nelson Mandela is prepared in Sweden and the woman has seen things that she was not supposed to see. Only after a long and complicated investigation Wallander and his colleagues can unravel all the ties and go after the villain, the ex-KGB man Konovalenko. From the beginning the reader knows both sides of the story and sees the events through the eyes of all actors, but this book is still very exciting with numerous unexpected turns. There are a few chapers which are a bit boring, that is why I give this book 4 rather than 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: A typically Swedish crime novel
Review: This is, I suppose, the second novel written by Mankell about Kurt Wallander. Set, as usual, in southern Sweden, this novel depicts a disturbing scenario where a KGB-agent and a black South African assassin lives in southern Sweden, preparing for the final shot: The murder of Nelson Mandela, by a black man. They're recruited by right-wing South African extremists, wanting to bring chaos into the region, and then take control. Kurt Wallander, the lone protagonist, enters the case when he discovers a Swedish housewife missing, muredered by Konovalenko, the agent. Wallander goes to South Africa to investigate, but finds himself in large trouble. As the day for the shot draws closer, Wallander must strive to stay alive, while seeking up Konovalenko. This reminds me very much of the Martin Beck books by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, but they are set in a Sweden in the 60's, while these books depicts a modern Sweden, trying to stay neutral and fighting international crime inside its borders. I look forward to the next Wallander book.
Rating: 
Summary: too ambitious
Review: This novel I find has a distant resemblance with the well known best seller from Frederik Forsyth "Day of the Jackal", because it deals with the attempt to kill a president. In the book of Forsyth there was De Gaulle, here is Nelson Mandela from South Africa, but all similarity ends in these, as the styles are very different. Yes, Konovalenko, the ex agent of the KGB now converted in a mercenary is as cruel and professional as the Jackal. But the main protagonist, the Swedish inspector Kurt Wallander is no doubt an atypical policeman: he goes usually unarmed, although he's very capable in shooting when truly necessary. He's also a lover of arts and classical music and a very good investigator from the intellectual point of view, but he's terrified by the violence Konovalenko and other hardened criminals can achieve, and so, I think partially unable for a ruthless so usual in dealing with very dangerous people. Still more complex is the personage of the first African murderer, Victor Mabasha, who, for an European reader, has a strange interior life, believer in tribal Gods and ancestors and I think as Wallander, a victim of his own contradictions. Rounding the madness is the figure of the instigator, the Boer leader Jan Kleyn. As a whole, I think the author has attempted a work too ambitious where Forsyth succeeded limiting his pretensions to a novel of pure action, and knowing the limits is good. Henning Mankel I think surpasses that, and the result is unequal, owing to the mixture between a plot of action, a complex psychological study of minds very separated by geographic and ethnical reasons, and a political overview of racism in South Africa. The conjunct is very difficult to achieve fully correct. As a detail, the "Astra Constable" found after the explosion in the house is a pistol originally designed and made in Spain, as in the novel figures as original of South Africa when no doubt is, or was made under license. That was a good, reliable pistol from medium size although now is a old model, used at the times by the police of Franco. Spanish small arms are very good. South African police seems in this book as hard as those of Spain dictatorship.
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