Book Review: Firewall, by Henning Mankell

A few years ago, Anwyl and I watched two different televised versions of the Kurt Wallander series by the Swedish writer Henning Mankell—one of them on a public channel that broadcast European mystery series, and one, if I recall correctly, from PBS. But it seems I never read the actual books, or if I did it's been so long ago I've forgotten. Which is lucky, as they are just the thing for right now—written with some depth and complexity and, at least in the two I've managed to date, with plots that involve the impact of global connectivity on local events. Wallander, the central detective character, is perpetually lonely, too, so the tension between isolation and connection is a theme that recurs in several ways. It resonates a bit with cooped-up conditions, although there's no literal relationship. We started with Firewall, the eighth of ten books in the series, which begins with a computer programmer dying suddenly after taking money out of an ATM and two teenage girls, in a seemingly unrelated event, bludgeoning and stabbing a taxi-driver to death. The plot spirals around potential connections between these events, mostly as seen through the experiences of Wallander and his team, although about two-thirds of the way through an American/Angolan character plotting the collapse of the world financial system is introduced.  That, too, (the collapse, I mean) resonates just a bit. And that's all I will say about the plot, in case someone wants to read it for themselves one day. It meets my requirements for end-of-the-day reading—well-written, terror and gore mostly kept at one remove so not incredibly disturbing, characters with some interior life. Thumbs up from this reader! I also read the fourth in the series, The White Lioness, during day of retreat in bed. The general thoughts I just expressed about Firewall apply to The White Lioness as well, but Firewall seemed more assured. It might just have been a better translation, but I took it as an inspiring example of a writer improving over time.