Faceless Killers -- Henning Mankell

This is the first book in Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series.  Originally, I picked it up because Vintage Crime/Black Lizard was the publisher.  I've found--for the most part--that if Vintage Crime/Black Lizard publishes a book, it's worth reading.  I had no idea how popular they were until just now.

The books are Swedish.  I thought that the translation seemed really strange--almost as if the words had just been transcribed exactly, without any finessing.  Like the original had been translated word for word.  It read awkwardly.  But maybe the translator did that deliberately.  (Understand that I know nothing about how Swedish sentences are constructed, so I really don't know.  That's just how it seemed to me.  I did look up the translator, and it looks like after this first book the publisher used someone else). 

Kurt Wallender is, for the most part, a stereotypical detective--he's divorced, depressed about the divorce, drinks too much, drowns his sorrows in opera, is estranged from his daughter, has a father that is sinking into dementia, and doesn't shy away from breaking the rules occasionally.  Sometimes his thoughts seemed to be almost spoofing the genre:

This is all going to hell, he thought.  Not a clue, nothing.  Only Rydberg's strange knot, and the word "foreign."  Two old people with no money under the bed, no antique furniture, are murdered in such a way that there seems to be something more than robbery behind it.  A murder of hate or revenge.

There must be something, he thought.  Something out of the ordinary about these two people.

If only the horse could talk!

But the book isn't satire.  I think that maybe the vibe was created by the combination of a not-so-great translation and the fact that it was the first book in the series--the first book, like the pilot episode of a television series, usually introduces all of the main characters and their various quirks, issues and backgrounds.  It was just too much.

But at the same time, I can imagine myself enjoying the later books much more.  At points, this one was great.  The mystery itself (and the response of the people living near the crime scene), at first, reminded me of In Cold Blood:

"Would you be able to sleep?" asked Nystrom.  "Would you be able to sleep if your neighbors had been slaughtered like dumb animals?"

Since Wallander couldn't think of a good answer, he said nothing.

"Thanks for the coffee," he said, got in his car, and drove off.

Later, of course, it gets much more complicated.  Even with my reservations, I'll probably read the next book in the series.