![]() ” But he doesn’t share his “great joy” because it is his nature to keep his private life to himself. Wallander almost tells his colleagues of “the great joy he has just been gifted with. This changes Wallander’s life forever, according to Mankell. After living happily there for four years, his daughter announces that she is pregnant. I also love it when Wallander, in a fit of roiling frustration and usually during a meeting at the station regarding a troubling case, slams his hand down on a table just for relief without saying a word.įaceless Killers by Henning MankellIn The Troubled Man, Wallander is fifty-five, when he gets a house with a view of the sea and a dog, both of which he’s dreamed of for years. I don’t think they are meant to make us laugh, but I do laugh. You have to chuckle at lines like that because Mankell blatantly delivers the unvarnished truth of the frailties of human existence. ![]() He is afraid of ending up alone with the exception of visits from his daughter and former visiting colleagues “who had suddenly remembered that” he “was still alive.” He promises himself that he’ll start a new and healthy routine, but, again, the public’s safety trumps his health and his relationships.Īs a result, he never finds another love to live with for the rest of his life. When he finally becomes a diabetic, he’s ashamed of it and tries to hide it in One Step Behind. He’s overweight and, at times, drinks too much, and exercise is an empty promise he makes to himself on a regular basis. I’ve known many people, real and fictional, who have done far less for their fathers. But not before Wallander accompanies him on a trip to Rome in The Fifth Woman. His wife Mona, divorces him, his daughter, Linda, often scolds him for being thoughtless and not seeing more of his own failing father, an artist who paints the same painting 7,000 times and who dies of Alzheimer’s disease. But as a result of his dedication to crime fighting, Wallander’s personal life is in shambles. You can always count on Wallander to get the bad guy. This wild scene puts a smile on my face because one never knows what Inspector Wallander will do to apprehend a criminal, such as breaking all the police procedural rules, defying his superiors at the department, and no matter the price to his life and limb. But action was necessary to catch the international criminal who sold human organs and was about to take off in his private plane and disappear forever. In The Man Who Smiled he’s sprinting through a crowded airport flailing his gun creating panic with terrified people fleeing from him in every direction. We love him even more when he throws caution to the wind altogether. Throughout his nineteen fictional years, translated into forty languages, a distraught Wallander has taken personally battling espionage, white slavery, misogynists, an attempt to assassinate Nelson Mandela, corruption in the Balkan state of Latvia, persecution of immigrants in Sweden, an attempt to destroy all the world’s computers, and apprehending serial killers before they strike again, to name a few of his challenges. ![]() ![]() But this “antihero” is the top detective for the police department of Ystad, Sweden, and a brilliant crime solver. He’s a flawed individual like the rest of us. We love Wallander, for instance, not because he does everything right, just the opposite. Is this any way to treat Mankell’s globally beloved character?Īs a writer, I search for the characteristics that endear Wallander to us. The little girl he couldn’t recognize was his cherished granddaughter, Klara. And Kurt Wallander slowly descended into darkness that some years later transported him into the empty universe known as Alzheimer’s disease. As if all colors had faded away and all he was left with was black and white. “It was as if everything had fallen silent. He knew he’d seen her before, but what her name was or what she was doing in his house he had no idea. He didn’t know who the girl running toward him was. Mankell wrote in his final book of the Kurt Wallander series, The Troubled Man, published in English last year: But couldn’t he have thought of Wallander’s loyal and long time fans, just a little? Thrown us a Scandinavian bone? We’ve had to accept that The Troubled Man was the last Wallander novel instead of expecting three or four more. The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell Henning Mankell had every right to end his Kurt Wallander series when and how he wanted to.
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