Firewall

October 7, 2002
In the sixth Kurt Wallander book to appear in English (One Step Behind, etc.), Mankell proves once again that spending time with a glum police inspector in chilly Sweden can be quite thrilling. In the small town of Ystad, a pair of seemingly random events take place within a matter of days: two teenage girls with no apparent motive brutally beat and stab a taxi driver to death, and a remarkably healthy man checks his bank balance at an ATM and then collapses dead on the sidewalk. After two more odd murders, Wallander becomes convinced that the incidents are all connected. The recurring clues demonstrating the vulnerability of society in the electronic age remain just outside of the Luddite inspector's understanding. But once he detects a conspiracy to collapse the world's financial infrastructure on a specific date, Wallander, whose position at work is already imperiled, ignores office politics and protocol to stop the would-be revolutionary. Although Wallander and his investigative team are forced to work at a dizzying speed, the pace of the book is just right, doling out new leads and intrigues right when they're needed. The only shortcoming in this otherwise smartly written mystery is that too many of the most perplexing clues discovered by Wallander are dismissed as red herrings or coincidence. Overall, however, Mankell's ambitious endeavor to combine large themes with small-town murder is a notable success.

March 30, 2009
When two dead bodies show up in the Swedish town of Ystad, the aging and disheartened police detective Kurt Wallander begins to investigate the murders as the press attacks his reputation. Mankell delivers a solid mystery with excellent buildup and dynamic characters, and Dick Hill's delivery keeps the tension taut through the story. Hill's gruff voice perfectly brings the downtrodden Wallander to life, but other characters' voices are sometimes unconvincing. Hill uses the same tone and pitch for all characters, rendering men and women confusingly interchangeable. The liberal use of audible sighs, snorts and chortles pull listeners deep into the narrative, and Hill should also be commended for his smooth reading of Swedish names and places. A Vintage paperback.