Sunday, November 1, 2015
Swedish noir and Swedish blanc - Wallander
Henning Mankell's first Kurt Wallander novel, Faceless Killers, is maybe a notch or two above standard crime/detective fare, mostly in this volume because of the political elements - the way in which the public quickly suspects that the killer or killers who slaughtered an elderly farmer and his wife at night in their remote farmhouse must be connected somehow to the immigrant community, the waves of people seeking asylum and confined to temporary housing, mostly in southern Sweden, where Mankell sets the story. The police - led by Wallander - know that it's unlikely that the killing had anything to do w/ the immigrants but are helpless in preventing public threats and acts of violence against the defenseless immigrants. What makes the novel a little more pedestrian, however, are a few factors: first, as w/ so many crime novels, much of it so far hinges on the rather unlikely possibility that the murdered farmer was leading a double life, that he'd stashed away millions of kroner and that he had a mistress and son in a nearby city - all very hard to accept or believe in the small farming community in which he lived, w/out a car no less. Even if true, the likelihood of a brother in law suddenly coming to the police w/ all this information really far surpasses credibility - though maybe there will be further twists along the way. But in my view a beautifully constructed crime novel gives the readers all they need to solve the crime right at the scene of the crime - that it's not dependent on a "big reveal" that we couldn't possibly figure out ourselves. Second, I know this novel is considered an example of "Swedish noir," and, yes, Wallander is a sad guy who's recovering from a recent divorce and has a dark and pessimistic attitude toward life, but I don't find any great descriptions of the world in which he lives, internal or external for that matter. The prose is serviceable, straightforward, and simple - but is really almost entirely a series of steps and actions and incidents, w/ very little reflection or observation (a la Hammet and Chandler, e.g.). I wonder about the choice of 3rd-person narrration: could the character be more vivid (a la Spenser) had he told the story himself?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.