Faceless Killers - MXHDR BookWyrm

Paperback, 280 pages

English language

Published Jan. 2, 2003 by Vintage Crime / Black Lizard.

ISBN:: 978-1-4000-3157-3
OCLC Number:: 50228573

(1 review)

It was a senselessly violent crime: on a cold night in a remote Swedish farmhouse an elderly farmer is bludgeoned to death, and his wife is left to die with a noose around her neck. And as if this didn’t present enough problems for the Ystad police Inspector Kurt Wallander, the dying woman’s last word is foreign, leaving the police the one tangible clue they have–and in the process, the match that could inflame Sweden’s already smoldering anti-immigrant sentiments.

Unlike the situation with his ex-wife, his estranged daughter, or the beautiful but married young prosecuter who has piqued his interest, in this case, Wallander finds a problem he can handle. He quickly becomes obsessed with solving the crime before the already tense situation explodes, but soon comes to realize that it will require all his reserves of energy and dedication to solve. --back cover

33 editions

colin reviewed Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

Didn't love it!

2 stars

This is the first book of a series, so maybe they get better, but it wasn't great. The writing is very lazy. There's single sentences that cover things I wanted to know more about, and entire paragraphs where a word or two would've sufficed. There's a lot of casual racism and sexism throughout, which the reader is supposed to understand as problematic, but Wallander often seems to thinks to himself "Huh, that person is racist and/or sexist, but I'd rather not call them out right now." Perhaps the most interesting thing about the book is Wallander's own problems with women and minorities, which as a character he seems to recognize and want to address, but the structure around it isn't good enough to make that meaningful or interesting.