Currently reading
Vineland (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)
Tristes Tropiques
Richard III
The Dwarf
The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
Labyrinths
Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics
Gravity's Rainbow
A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel
I ran across a reference to Mankell from someone on GR who said that crime-writing afficionados really like him.... but then, when I read some of the other GR reviews, I nearly tossed this one in the bucket. I'm glad I didn't! This is a first-rate -- a REALLY first-rate piece of genre writing.It's 4.5 stars (maybe 4.75) -- and that because I'm getting more conservative in my old age... but its 4.5 from the five-side, not from the 4+ side...
Wallander is a tough, realistic, angst-ridden policeman living and working in small-town Sweden that's getting grittier by the decade... the characters are real, the plot rich and unexpected, the prose unadorned and transparent.
Complaints about the translation, which are widespread on Goodreads, are (imho) totally misplaced.
I realize that it's chic and easy to trash Scandi-crime books now, given the huge financial success of Tatttoo (which I haven't read) - but my advice is: if you like crime fiction, just trash all the GR cynicism and read this one.
Ah..., screw it...! just give it a five...