Faceless Killers

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell (1991)

Reader's Annotation

When it's leaked that a murder victim's last word was foreign, anti-immigrant sentiments flare.

Summary

When an elderly couple are tortured and killed in their farmhouse in Lunnarp, Sweden, Inspector Kurt Wallander has little to go on. What motive could there have been for killing the elderly farm couple? A possible clue, that the wife's last word may have been foreign, is one that Wallander would really prefer not to deal with. The choice is taken out of his hands when the wife's possible last word is leaked to the media, sparking a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment. A series of anonymous threats culminate in the killing of a Somali refugee, giving Wallander another murder to solve.

Wallander does solve it and begins to make progress on the original case as well. It turns out that the husband had significant money of his own that the wife didn't know about. The final irony is that the original clue was accurate—the murderers were foreign immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Evaluation

This was an accurately drawn police procedural in which solving a case is more about following the leads, doing the work, and not giving up than it is about flashy forensics and brilliant insights. Kurt Wallander is a bit of a sad sack: his wife has left him, his daughter won't talk to him, he's drinking too much, and his father is sinking into dementia. He may not always be very likable but he's a sympathetically well rounded character that is somehow admirable in his dogged determination to keep at these cases even when he seems to be making little progress. The tone of this novel is realistically hard-boiled. The look at issues of immigration in Sweden is interesting.

This series should have a common appeal to fans of other Scandinavian crime novelists such as Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and, of course, Stieg Larsson. I'd also suggest the Detective Inspector John Rebus stories by Ian Rankin set in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Genres: Mystery/Crime
Subgenres: Police Procedural