Review by New York Times Review
When your number's up, your number's up - although not necessarily in the realm of crime fiction, where a series detective can miraculously recover from seemingly fatal wounds like author fatigue, professional redundancy and out-of-print oblivion. John Harvey's popular Nottingham police detective, Inspector Charlie Resnick, looked like a goner in "Last Rites," but the jazz-loving, cat-collecting, humanitarian detective is back on the job in COLD IN HAND (Otto Penzler/Harcourt, $26). The question is, can such a decent, honorable man survive in a society where the rules are breaking down? Gritty Nottingham was always a tough city to police, though never as bad as its reputation. "Anything 50 miles out of London, they think everyone's going to be wearing loincloths and painting themselves blue," as one provincial detective puts it. But street crime in the battered industrial center has degenerated into something like chaos now that its youth gangs are fully armed and far more dangerous. International criminals have taken over the sex trade and added gunrunning to their repertory. Meanwhile, police efforts to keep the peace in embattled immigrant neighborhoods are undermined by the resentment and racial hostility of the local populace. "Doesn't even rain like it used to," one detective complains. His rants against "the multicultural society" aren't the sort of thing we're accustomed to hearing from the long-suffering coppers in this thoughtful series, but such outbursts of futility feel every bit as authentic as the fusillades of incoherent rage that ricochet off the streets. Ignoring the heated rhetoric, Resnick doggedly operates according to his own fairness doctrine. ("Education, wasn't that at the heart of it? Jobs, housing?") He's always been on the lookout for the essential goodness of a tough gang kid or the common thread of humanity that binds us all. But even good guys have their limits, and the jazz album Resnick plays at the end, after a shocking, belief-shattering murder - a mournful concert of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong - tells us things will never be the same. If Andrew Pyper scripted our collective nightmares, we'd all be dreaming and screaming like the narrator of his gorgeously written and thoroughly unnerving suspense thriller, THE KILLING CIRCLE (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95). Your heart goes out to Patrick Rush, a grieving young widower, anxious father and dispirited television critic ("The Couch Potato") for a Toronto daily, who joins a writing workshop to thaw his frozen feelings - only to realize he has no story to tell. The same can't be said of fellow scribblers like creepy Ivan, the subway conductor who writes Kafkaesque fantasies about a sewer rat, or girlish Angela, whose morbid horror story about "a terrible man who does terrible things" not only reflects the activities of a real-life serial killer but seems to be directing his attacks on members of their own circle - if he isn't already a member of it. Taken as either a classy ghost story or the chronicle of one man's mental breakdown, this is a terrific yarn. But in examining the universal need to define one's self through narrative, it also explores the darker side of storytelling. In this context, it's worth remembering that, at least in theory, "the teller never dies in his own tale." It may be heretical to say this, but Henning Mankell could put off even the most loyal reader with the polemical tone he often takes in his novels. That being said, THE PYRAMID (New Press, $26.95) is sure to bring any alienated fans stampeding back into the fold. Although this excellent collection was written while Mankell was still at work on his cycle of morality mysteries featuring the morose Swedish detective Kurt Wallander, its two novellas and three short stories are all set before Jan. 8, 1990 (the day Wallander took on his first published case in the novel "Faceless Killers") and follow the career of this iconic hero from his earliest days as a 21-year-old rookie cop. In "Wallander's First Case," he must be schooled in the most rudimentary procedures (don't go unarmed after a guy with a knife), but the learning process is priceless. By the time of the title story, set 20 years later, Wallander's character has been forged and his stern moral code firmly set in place. The grand surprise here is the pivotal role played by the detective's irascible father, who passes on a most important life lesson - to climb (literally, if need be) the pyramid of one's dreams. As devoted as we are to our heroes, we can't get enough of the bad boys we call antiheroes. Patricia Highsmith's charming preppy killer, Tom Ripley, ranks high in this pantheon of immortals, and all five of his deadly adventures are now available in a handsome boxed set, THE COMPLETE RIPLEY NOVELS (Norton, $100; or separately, $13.95 each, in paperback). While this appealing monster remains at his irresistible best in "The Talented Mr. Ripley," it's a guilty pleasure to watch him refine his murderous craft, right up to his final amoral act in "Ripley Under Water." Far more of a shock are the first three novels in which Donald E. Westlake (writing as Richard Stark) introduced the professional thief and ruthless killer known only as Parker. By the time this cunning crook makes his payback move against the mob in THE OUTFIT, his bleak wit and criminal ingenuity are fully in place. But both THE HUNTER and THE MAN WITH THE GETAWAY FACE (University of Chicago, paper, $14 each) reveal what a sexy brute he was, way back before he was cool. Can decent, honorable Inspector Charlie Resnick survive in a society where the rules are breaking down?
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In this retrospective collection, internationally best-selling Swedish mystery author Mankell proves himself a master of the short form. This five-story collection offers a look at how Mankell's series hero, Inspector Kurt Wallander, came to be the cop he is. In Wallander's First Case, Mankell flashes back to his hero's first homicide investigation, an off-hours project undertaken while Wallander was still working as a Malmo beat cop. The collection's title story moves forward in time, picking up Wallander, now the intuitive lead officer of the Ystad violent crimes unit. Wallander's marriage, separation, and divorce are all examined as well as his strained relationship with his eccentric father and his evolving relationship with his daughter, Linda. Fans of the series will be most interested, however, in the extended portrait of Rydberg, Wallander's beloved mentor and former colleague, who only appears tangentially in the novels. These stories will also serve as an excellent introduction to Mankell in particular and to Scandinavian crime fiction in general; significantly, the first two stories share much the same tone, style, and setting as the works of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Mankell's great predecessors. The Wallander series, which Mankell believes should be subtitled novels of Swedish anxiety, are essential reading for all crime-fiction fans, and this collection adds an indispensable chapter to the saga.--Moyer, Jessica Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. The five stories in this outstanding collection from Mankell (Faceless Killers) provide glimpses into Kurt Wallander's early life as a policeman as well as paint evocative portraits of contemporary Swedish society. An unremarkable businessman is poisoned in The Man on the Beach but--in typical Mankell fashion--the case is larger, more complex and more interesting than it first appears. In the volume's best entry, The Death of the Photographer, Simon Lamberg takes studio portraits of weddings and children, but a couple of nights each week, he uses his darkroom to distort published photographs of politicians and newsworthy people for a macabre personal scrapbook. It's a bizarre hobby, but the cause of Lamberg's brutal, apparently senseless death is an even stranger puzzle. Like the Wallander novels, these stories rank among the finest police procedurals being written today. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The early adventures of Kurt Wallander, that most human of all fictional detectives, are revealed in a collection of short mysteries. In 1969, the time of "Wallander's First Case," the melancholy Swede is a callow 21. Eager to please, his sleuthing talent still embryonic, he stumbles into a solution. By 1975, the Wallander of "The Man with the Mask," who's clearly grown more comfortable in his professional skin, confronts and collars the crazed killer of a harmless old shopkeeper. "The Man on the Beach," set in 1987, is a variation on the locked-room mystery. By this time the hero is 40, ruefulness has set in and Wallander has begun to think of himself as "a police officer from another age." "The Death of the Photographer," set a year later, is noteworthy mostly because nonviolent Wallander comes close to killing a man. In "The Pyramid," the last, longest and best of these prequels, Wallander has full-blown weltschmerz. It's 1989 and the chief inspector frets about his health, worries about going bald, misses his divorced wife, battles his cunning father (hilariously), yearns to be closer to his daughter and tries to end a soul-draining love affair while he skillfully, relentlessly pursues a slick, remorseless drug dealer. Four OK stories capped by a perfect gem of a novella, "The Pyramid," which no fan of Wallander (The Man Who Smiled, 2006, etc.) should miss. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
