I rated this one pretty low because Kurt blunders in again and keeps doing stupid things. This story starts to show some of the comments we will read later about foreigners in “Faceless Killers” when Kurt and his former boss, Hemberg have a nowhere discussion. When Kurt is asked to stop by on his way to his new home in Ystad to follow-up on a phone call from a woman reporting a strange man outside her store. Mankell shows the cracks in the marriage of Kurt and Linda and the fact that they often don’t have much to say to each other without fighting. Kurt is now married to Mona and they have a 5 year old daughter named Linda. “The Man With the Mask” (3.5 stars)-This story takes place on Christmas Eve 1975. Frankly I wondered why Kurt was so hell-bent on being with Mona when she reads as pretty awful in this short story. We also get to see a sensitive side to him with regards to how his relationships with his father, Mona, and his sister go in this one. He is very good at putting together puzzles. ![]() We get a nice look at Kurt’s ongoing doggedness in investigating. When one of Kurt’s next door neighbors ends up dead and the initial investigation points to suicide, Kurt starts digging due to the comments made by Detective Inspector Hemburg. So from the start readers are treated to some of the forces in Kurt’s life that want him to walk another path. Kurt is dating someone new named Mona who also isn’t happy with Kurt’s career since he is often late to meet her. He is dealing with his father who is not happy that Kurt is a policeman and pushes on Kurt for being a police officer when there is so much protest going on in Sweden about the Vietnam War. “Wallander’s First Case” (4 stars)-Taking place in 1969 we get to see Kurt as a young policeman. The five short stories show Wallander as a young policeman and then through the years from 1969 up until January 8, 1990. ![]() We also have what I consider a pretty decent relationship between Kurt and his daughter Linda and we didn’t get that impression at all in “Faceless Killers.” That said we do get to see Kurt’s tenacity in solving cases. We don’t hear how he started studying it at one point and had plans on being an impresario. What’s weird though is that we hear mention of Kurt’s love of opera but it’s said that he just likes it. And we get to hear about Kurt’s bad diet and poor house-keeping. We get to see the beginning of his ill-fated marriage with his wife Mona and he and the rest of his family’s messed up interactions. ![]() He got beaten up I think in every story but one. It just shows a guy that tends to go in without thinking. I dithered between 3 and 4 stars and mostly that’s because it seemed this collection showing Kurt through the years prior to the start of the first book in the series doesn’t really give us any more insight into him and at times seems to contradict things that we know about him. I enjoyed the tv show starring Kenneth Branagh and always meant to try to give the series another go when I got a chance. So I read “Faceless Killers” back in 2016 and never got back to the Kurt Wallander series.
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