Mourning Wallander

Detective Kurt Wallander is the creation of Henning Mankell, a prolific Swedish author, and the favorite of Swedish mystery readers before and after Stieg Larsson. The Wallander series is eleven books long. These are written chronologically from Faceless Killers, when Wallander is in his early forties, to The Troubled Man, at sixty. The only book out of time line is The Pyramid, a collection of stories published in the middle of the series with the object of giving readers (by that time you could call us fans) a view into Wallander's earlier years. In addition, Wallander has been honored with not one, but two, TV series, one in Swedish with Swedish actors, the other one a PBS production shot in the town of Ystad and surrounding areas (Wallander's playground) with Kenneth Branagh in the protagonist role. The cast is entirely British.

Kurt Wallander acts as witness to a changing Swedish society as these changes affect the rural area of Skane. On the southern tip of Sweden, right across from Denmark, the county of Skane and Wallander's home town of Ystad are a quick boat ride away from the former East Germany, Poland and the crime-ridden Baltic states of the now defunct U.S.S.R. The malady is contagious, the whole world suffers from the ills of sex trade and traffic, political intrigue, religious fanaticism, political extremism, racism, greed, jealousy and many kinds of betrayal. He despairs of the changes to his world and, as he grows old, finds himself in anachronistic misstep with the spirit of the times.

Wallander is divorced, a fact he carries with obvious bitterness; the father of an independent-minded child, Linda; son of an irascible artist father; sometimes lover; occasional heavy drinker; brilliant detective; respected boss and uneasy subordinate; and, most prominently, loner. Mature readers can't get enough. He is a mirror to our souls, often times the narrative behind our own thoughts. Or, to be precise, my one and only literary crush. At the end of The Troubled Man, the last book, Henning Mankell gives Wallander Alzheimer's disease, proclaiming him as good as dead. Mr. Mankell had made no secret of this. I knew what was coming as I read. Still, I was not prepared for the shock. A voice that had become so familiar was silenced. It hit me with the sadness of a true death.

Youth equals daring. Risk taking is an obvious condition of the rebellious teenager. But even the conservative one takes leaps of faith if only because there is no way to know better yet. Cliché as the phrase might be, the world is full of possibilities at twenty. If you allow me a gross generalization, I'd say that for many, this remains so at thirty, even at forty. A few lucky, or unlucky, ones, depends from where you look at it, continue to act with reckless abandon into their late forties. But just around fifty the weight of all we have seen, done, suffered, all the suffering we may have inflicted on others, that weight interferes with the decision-making process and we are less prone to take a chance. This might eventually lead to paralysis. And this is exactly the ride that Wallander has taken us through.

After the divorce, anger and regret build an impenetrable barrier. In the second book, The Dogs of Riga, Wallander meets Baiba Liepa, the widow of a policeman in Riga, and falls in love with her. Through the next eight books we are treated to slight paint strokes about the relationship. A romantic get away, her fear of commitment and for his safety, his debilitating desire and love for her, and his absolute inability to do anything about it. Committed to family and job, all it would take would be a selfish act, the kind that's so easy in youth: putting one's immediate desire first, damn the world if it condemns us as fools. In the twilight of life, Wallander is aware of chances that will not present themselves again and still lets them go. But not without a degree of regret.

Growing older is many things. In the world of our parents, getting old started early and there was no remedy for it. We can now choose how old we are, how much immaturity to carry throughout, how many new beginnings we are entitled to. We may decide to start a new career at fifty, take up bungee jumping at fifty-eight, divorce (and face life alone for the first time) at sixty-three, write our first novel at sixty-five, learn to sail at seventy, and leave for our first solo circumnavigation of the world at seventy-six. But everything I said above about the weight of the past remains true. Decisions are harder. Impetuosity is calculated. Immediate gratification carefully planned. And at every step we run the risk of, like Wallander, letting the weight immobilize us. The battle is fought every day. Perhaps I liked having Wallander by my side as a cautionary tale. Perhaps I felt the pull to, like him, just be. Either way, I miss him and mourn him. And, somehow, can't let him go.

Needless to say, I'm rereading the whole series, beginning to end, falling in love again with this alcoholic, overweight, nearly depressed Swedish policeman. Grouchy and despondent as he might be, and lacking in tattoos (dragons or otherwise) or body piercings, Mr. Kurt Wallander still stands as crime fiction's most accomplished character. A fundamental reason for his inability to break away and walk into the sunset with his beautiful Latvian lover is his commitment to a job at which he excels. The chains that bind us need not be iron and spikes. The success and satisfaction of a job well done; the chance to accompany our elders into their own twilight; time spent witnessing the growth of children and their chrysalis transformation into mature adults. Is the only decision to be made between being selfish and being good? Is his paralysis a fear of love and rejection, or an acknowledgment of faults? .... See? These are the thoughts that come and go as I pass the pages, or go back and re-read a paragraph. This is the beauty of great fiction. The constant interaction with one's own mind, like what passes between conversation of people who know and stimulate each other. For all that has ended since Wallander's walk into oblivion, I'll be mourning his passing as the death of a friend.

The Books of Tana French

In The Woods, The Likeness and Faithful Place are some of the best mysteries I have recently read and which may also claim an exceptional quality in the mystery world: a young voice. That, in itself, should not guarantee them the many awards and high popularity. But it's a mark of distinction and a welcome change from all other voices, too many of them 50 an up. Nice to know that young people can solve murders, too.

The bookends are better than the middle. And, in spite of current praise and more awards, the first better than the last. For one thing, In The Woods has the freshness of a surprise. A relatively new police detective, Rob, and his even less experienced partner, Cassie, must find the killer of an adolescent girl that strongly reminds him of an unsolved crime that claimed the lives of his two childhood friends. No need to go into plot summaries. Here is a list of all that works with this book:

• the protagonist's voice, Rob, who hides as much as he tells, and hooks you to absolute surrender. You just want him to keep talking
• the relationship between Rob and Cassie, their unusual friendship, the too real feel to everything that's right and everything that's wrong
• the subtle way how things unravel
• being taken for a ride by a masterful writer who hides clues in plain sight of an experienced mystery reader

Two things must happen for a mystery to work, IMHO. An "I didn't see that coming," moment, even though it was all there. And an "I don't want it to end." In The Woods has both, particularly in the unexpectedness of its denouement. It gets thumbs up, five stars, gold stars and my strongest recommendation.

The Likeness follows Cassie, undercover, impersonating a dead girl, her doppelganger (identical double), to find her killer. The idea stretches the limits of possibility, so it's harder to buy into it. But, again, she has an impeccable voice, and a cast of four other college students. It is great fun to read. It's not The Woods.

After the success of the two books above, I couldn't wait for Faithful Place. Frank Mackey, undercover policeman who made a strong appearance in The Likeness as Cassie's case lead, is back, this time trying to solve a twenty-two year old murder, that of the girlfriend he meant to elope with as a teenager, but who disappeared the night of their agreed escape from their Dublin working class neighborhood and dueling families. The portrait of Frank's family is a work of art. His alcoholic father, his abused mother, his siblings all suffering from different degrees of disappointment, the life he fled from and the consequences this escape had for him and those he left behind. Tana French peels the layers of the mystery with precise strokes, allowing a slow zooming in, until there's nothing to hide. It's as much murder mystery as a chronicle of a class and a time. In this regard, it couldn't be better.

Early in the book, a character enters the scene as an obvious bad seed. It was with a little smirk that I saluted Miss French. Nice, I thought. She's throwing an obvious one at us. I wonder who the killer will be, because this character couldn't possibly be it. Throughout the book, she plants enough red herrings to keep the reader wondering who the killer might be. So I must confess a little disappointment that I wasn't fooled.

Maybe I should get off the mystery drug so I can recover my innocence. I won't blame Tana French for my jadedness, though. Every one of these books is worth a day in the sun. Or a whole vacation.