Faceless killers henning mankell how to#

Faceless killers henning mankell how to#

For instance several of Wallander’s team-mates take on extra work when he has to take time off to settle the question of how to care for his father.

They protect one another and it’s clear that they are a cohesive unit. All of the cops look out for each other and care about each other.

There’s also a real sense of camaraderie in this novel. There’s also the sense of satisfaction when the case is solved although you really couldn’t say that anyone is jubilant. There are long hours, lots of annoyances, members of the press and higher-ups to satisfy and of course, the hard, dirty, ugly work of investigating. It’s an honest procedural too in that we see how very long it can take for a case to be solved. This is a true police procedural where we follow along as the members of the team collect evidence, conduct interviews and follow leads.

One of the very important elements in this novel is the look we get at police life. As the novel goes on Wallander finds ways to reconcile these major changes in his life. And then there’s his daughter Linda, who attempted suicide when she was a teenager and who has basically cut her father out of her life. His father, with whom he’s never been close, is showing signs of very erratic behaviour so Wallander and his sister Kristina have to make some decisions about how to care for their father. He misses her dreadfully and isn’t ready to go on without her. His wife Mona left him six months earlier and he is still reeling from their breakup. In the meantime Wallander is having problems of his own. And as the team members work on the case of the murdered refugee, they discover that that case leads them in unexpected and politically very tricky directions. As the team looks more deeply into the Lövgren case they find that there was more to Johannes Lövgren than it seemed on the surface and there are facts about him that even his wife didn’t know. Wallander now has that investigation as well as the investigation into the Lövgrens’ murders on his hands. Soon after the Lövgrens are murdered, a Somali immigrant living at a camp not far away is shot. The police don’t have long to wait for that reaction. There’s already anti-immigration sentiment in Sweden, and when word gets round as it soon does that the Lövgrens may have been killed by foreigners, there could be a serious backlash. That last word suggests that Wallander and his team are going to have a particularly difficult problem on their hands. Maria Lövgren dies, but not before uttering the word foreign. Besides, reasons Wallander, if the attacks were the result of a robbery gone wrong, why be so brutal?The police are following up leads and beginning the initial lab and other forensics testing when everything about the investigation changes. The Lövgrens didn’t have enemies, they didn’t live a wealthy lifestyle and nothing valuable seems to have been taken from the home. At first there seems absolutely no reason those two should have been so brutally attacked. She’s taken to hospital and Ystad Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team begin their investigation. Johannes Lövgren is dead, and Maria is barely alive when the police arrive. The novel begins early one freezing January morning when a farmer named Nyström discovers that his neighbours Johannes and Maria Lövgren have been brutally attacked.