A review by octavia_cade
Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

dark mysterious slow-paced

3.5

I enjoyed this, but I think if I had to describe it in one word, that word would be "muted." This is not a criticism. Wallander comes across as depressed - he's certainly got enough personal problems to be so - and the entire seething undercurrent of hatred against immigrants is presented as perpetual and unsolvable, a social ill that's part of the fabric of society, woven in so deep that it'll never be unearthed. None of this is actually cheerful, and the entire book seems to present itself in shades of grey: not that the basic understanding of good and evil is complex here, because it isn't really, but the social landscape seems sort of drained of colour, an endless drudge. How much of that is reality, and how much is reflected and magnified through Wallander's own quiet exhaustion, I don't know, but I did appreciate the effect.

I also quite enjoyed reading a more modern mystery that was solidly a mystery, without being taken over by thriller. I like thrillers, I do, but the biggest excitement here is when Wallander is chasing a suspect and falls off a piece of scaffolding. There's no-one coming after him, specifically, which is a nice change of pace within the various crime stories I've been reading the past year or two.