There are plenty of unguarded strips where the dope and the illegal immigrants are unloaded every night.” Control of the borders has been eliminated. : “Right now we’re living in a country where anyone with any motive at all can come in anywhere in this country at any and in any manner.It’s precisely the lack of refugee policy that creates chaos.” “We have a refugee policy in this country that must be followed.” “Wrong.
One, a Somali, father of nine children, while walking alone down a country lane near his camp, gets his head blown off by a ruthless killer with an accomplice in a near-by car ready to whisk him away from the crime scene.īut the book does not merely “show”, Mankell is not afraid of “telling”, here are some examples:
The book is peppered with Mankell’s personal opinions about racism and how refugees are viewed and ill-treated in refugee camps in Sweden. It was after that the idea of a policeman was born.” “Racism for me is a crime, and therefore it seemed natural that I wrote a crime novel. In fact, Mankell himself had lived in Africa and brought his own views to his books and the character Kurt Wallander. And it’s a book that does not shy from raising deep, uncomfortable questions. This is a book that has deep roots in Swedish society, and by extension, in the society of any advanced country that calls itself (like Sweden) a democracy, that believes it has humanitarian traditions. The other striking aspect of Faceless Killers is its social dimension. Kurt Wallander soon becomes someone you feel you know, someone who goes through the same (often depressing) experiences so many of us go through our lives as a marriage grows stale, as a child turns into a rebellious teenager, as a parent slowly sinks into old age. To transcend the genre and establish credentials as a genuine, world-class work of literature, follow Mankell’s example: develop your main character. Rule #1: establish empathy with your main character – even if this is a police procedural and the implications are that police procedures and the thrill of the chase should trump characterization.
You get the sense that Kurt Wallander, ordinary as he is, has in fact a complex life and you, the reader, feel for him. He has problem with his senile, grumpy and lonely father, a landscape artist endlessly painting the same landscape, his cool wife Mona who has just left him, causing him to dream of making love to a black woman (inexplicably black but then dreams are not always explainable) and his complicated daughter Linda, an independent young woman who lives with her boyfriend from Kenya and can’t make up her mind about attending college. When it does slow down – as inevitably it must if you’re following a police investigation step-by-step, an indispensable aspect of making this novel realistic – then Kurt Wallander’s personal life butts in. Here’s what I found – the main “lessons learned” to ensure that your next thriller is going to rise above the genre and make it as a global bestseller.Īs you will see, there are only two rules to follow.įirst, let me say it’s a great read, the pace never slackens. But now I wanted to find out more, I thought I would try and uncover the roots of his success by reading that first book in the Wallander series, the one that “made it”, with the arresting title Faceless Killers.
Faceless killers mankell series#
Of course, I’m familiar with the character of Kurt Wallander, an ordinary, middle-aged policeman working in a small town in Southern Sweden, having seen several episodes of a series featuring him on ARTE TV.
0 kommentar(er)
