From 2005 to 2006, 13 new stories, starring Krister Henriksson as Kurt Wallander and Johanna Sällström as Linda Wallander, were produced. The first film, based on Before the Frost, was released in cinemas. The rest are original stories not based on any of Mankell's books, and were released on DVD, with the exception of Mastermind which was also released in cinemas. Faceless Killers ( Swedish: Mördare utan ansikte) is a 1991 crime novel by the Swedish writer Henning Mankell, and the first in his acclaimed Wallander series. [1] The English translation by Steven T. Murray was published in 1997. The Dogs of Riga ( Hundarna i Riga). Made in 1995; directed by Per Berglund, with screenplay by Lars Bjorkman. [2] The Darkness ( Mörkret) One beautiful summer day, a child is found abandoned in a parked car. Her father is nowhere to be found and her mother, committed to an insane asylum, is not much help to Linda, who must take charge when Kurt falls ill.

Wallander wonders why “almost every policeman was divorced. Why their wives left them. Sometimes, when he read a crime novel, he discovered with a sigh things were just as bad in fiction. Policemen were divorced. That’s all there was to it” [p. 27]. What is it about being a cop that would make marriage unsustainable? How does Wallander feel about his estranged wife? What do their interactions reveal about why the marriage failed? The tension in the country is palpable. Native Latvians hope to take advantage of the international situation to win their freedom from the Soviets, but many Soviet transplants to the country want to maintain ties to the Soviet Union. The police force itself is divided and no one knows who to trust. Yellow Bird announced in March 2008 that 13 new Swedish language Wallander films were to be made with Krister Henriksson. Production started in 2008. These new films were to have a more political slant than the previous films starring Henriksson. [8] [9] The first production in the second series, Hämnden[ The Revenge] , was given a cinematic launch in Sweden on 9 January 2009 before being released on DVD. The theme over the closing credits is "Quiet Night", sung by Anna Ternheim. The remaining were scheduled to be released on DVD during early 2010: Mankell thus sets the stage for a clever police procedural set against the larger social issue of how welcoming Sweden--or any other country--should be to growing numbers of immigrants. Wallander is typical of the breed of plodding Scandinavian detectives who refuse to give up until they have deduced the solution to the case. At times, though, you find yourself wondering why he soldiers along in the face of the overwhelming personal problems in his life off-duty. Mankell, Henning (2009). "Chapter 30". The Troubled Man. London: Random House - Vintage. ISBN 978-0-099-54840-9.The White Lioness ( Den Vita lejoninnan). Made in 1996; directed by Per Berglund, with screenplay by Lars Bjorkman. [3] The fact that one of Wallander's clues is that the killer is a foreigner thrusts the reader into a world of refugees, racism, and red tape. There are false leads and I have to admit I wasn't sure what was going on in the investigation part of the time.

The Man Who Smiled ( Mannen som log). Made in 2003; directed by Leif Lindblom, with screenplay by Klas Abrahamsson and Michael Hjorth. [6] The Secret ( Hemligheten) A young boy’s murder on an abandoned farm opens up the world of child pornography and pedophilia and strikes a personal chord with Stefan, whose personal struggles force him to relinquish the case to Kurt and Linda.

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He is frequently at loose ends socially and with his family. After the breakup of his marriage, he had an affair with Annette Brolin, the prosecutor with whom he was working on some cases — but she was married and had children, and would not consider divorcing for his sake (" Faceless Killers"). In later years, he maintains a somewhat inconsistent romantic relationship with Baiba Liepa, a woman in Riga, Latvia, whom he met while investigating a murder there, until it eventually dissolves. Over the course of the series he is diagnosed with diabetes, and towards the end of his career he suffers from memory lapses, discovering he has developed Alzheimer's disease, with which his father was also afflicted. A few days later, he's informed that the Latvian detective has been murdered, and their authorities want Wallander to come assist with the case, as he was the last person who spent time with the murdered detective. Wallander is a film series based on the Kurt Wallander novels written by Henning Mankell that were adapted into multiple miniseries and TV films by Sveriges Television (SVT) between 1994 and 2006. These Swedish-language films starred Rolf Lassgård as Wallander. The final film Pyramiden (2007) features Gustaf Skarsgård as a younger Wallander. Still more typical of modern life is Wallander’s strained relationship with his aging father, who lives on a farm near Ystad, where he paints Swedish landscapes, alternately with or without a wood grouse. His failed attempts to reconcile himself with his stern father’s disapproval of his career as a policeman remains a constant source of consternation for Wallander. Each time he fails to visit his father because of his job, readers cannot help but feel sympathy for this awkwardly helpless guardian of the law. When Inspector Wallander arrives at the crime scene and observes the atrocities committed on the elderly couple, Maria and and Johannes Lövgren, he’s determined come what may to find the murderers. He’s convinced somehow that more than one person is involved.

Wallander was born in 1948. [1] His mother died when he was about 14. [2] After completing national service, [3] he joined the police. As a young police officer, he was nearly killed when a drunk whom he was questioning stabbed him with a butcher's knife (this is mentioned in the account of his first case). He has a sister, Kristina. Wallander was once married, but his wife Mona left him and he has since had a difficult relationship with his rebellious only child, Linda, who barely survived a suicide attempt when she was fifteen. He also has issues with his father, an artist who has painted the same landscape 7,000 times for a living; the elder Wallander strongly disapproved of his son's decision to join the police force and frequently derides him for it. The Guilt ( Skulden) A missing six-year-old boy is found dead. As the team explores other lines of inquiry, Martisson is convinced the culprit is a recently released pedophile, leading to an unfortunate escalation of vigilantism in the the surrounding town. Mankell's friend and writer Jan Guillou used Kurt Wallander in the 10th book of his Carl Hamilton-series En medborgare höjd över varje misstanke[ A Citizen Above Suspicion] . Guillou and Mankell also co-wrote the Swedish crime-drama mini series Talismanen and here we also encounter Kurt Wallander as a supporting character, this time portrayed by actor Lennart Jähkel. [12] Young Wallander [ edit ]Tengo que confesar que no está entre los mejores de este magnífico escritor (siempre según mi opinión, por supuesto). Pero me han gustado, y mucho, su desarrollo en Letonia, y el trasfondo político en el que estaban sumergidos los países del este a la caída del Muro de Berlín y del colapso de la Unión Soviética. Mankell lo escribió por aquella época, por lo que el relato denota la frescura del momento, sin saber aún qué pasaría con este y otros países satélites de Moscú. Aquí la investigación en sí es lo de menos. Lo realmente interesante está en revivir las experiencias del comisario en una Letonia que, para Wallander, era un gran misterio. A menudo compara las condiciones de vida letonas con las de su propio país, mucho más avanzado en todos los sentidos, y aún así, termina por cogerle cariño a una Riga (la capital) decrépita y decadente, donde la corrupción y el espionaje al vecino campan a sus anchas. In charge of the investigation is Inspector Kurt Wallander, a local detective whose personal life is in a shambles. His family is falling apart, he’s gaining weight, and he drinks too much and sleeps too little. Tenacious and levelheaded in his sleuthing, he and his colleagues must contend with a wave of violent xenophobia as they search for the killers. Before the Frost ( Innan frosten) In the only episode in series one based on a book, Linda has just joined the Ystad force and helps her father with an animal torture case that becomes the prelude to the ritual murder of humans. ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE‘S 100BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME•The mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander •From the dean of Scandinaviannoir, the first riveting installment in the internationally bestselling anduniversally acclaimed Kurt Wallander series. Es el segundo de la serie Kurt Wallander, y fue publicado en los primeros años de los 90. Aunque he leído posteriores, tenía pendientes este, y también el tercero, que leeré en breve.

Pyramiden (1999; short stories; English translation by Ebba Segerberg with Laurie Thompson: The Pyramid, 2008) I enjoyed the first Wallander book and this one starts off promising but it ultimately fizzles. The set up rapidly takes us through some standard police procedural but after a few reveals it switches focus to a new, seemingly unrelated crime. Wallander is promptly sent to Riga in Latvia and for much of the middle section he wanders/mopes around Riga with little focus. He can't seem to figure out why he's there and I couldn't either to be honest.His mantra was “a time to live and a time to die”. “He had adopted this incantation many years ago, when he was a young policeman, cruising the streets of Malmö, his home town. A drunk had pulled out a big butcher’s knife as he and his partner were trying to take him away……Wallander was stabbed deep, right next to his heart. A few millimetres were all that saved him from an untimely death. He had been twenty-three then, suddenly profoundly aware of what it meant to be a policeman. The incantation was his way of fending off the memories.” As seems to be the case among the Scandinavian authors I've read, Mankell is more concerned with characterization than he is with setting. We spend extensive time inside Wallander's head, and the other characters are well-realized and feel authentic. The dialog is likewise realistic and serves to both move the plot and further the characterizations. However, if you don't know what Ystad (Our Hero's hometown) looks like before reading this, you won't be any better informed afterwards. To be fair, Mankell spends more time describing Riga than he does any other location, possibly because Wallander is seeing it for the first time, and possibly because it was still considered exotic in 1992 when this book first appeared in Sweden. Rydberg describes the crime scene as being so grisly it was “like an American movie” [p. 21]. What does this comment suggest about the relationship between representations of violence for purposes of entertainment and real violence? What does it suggest about the differences between Sweden and America? The Heritage ( Arvet) The owner of a cider factory is stabbed to death. When a string of suspects on the premises themselves are murdered, Isabelle and Pontus must look after the heiress wife all the while controlling their new-found passion for each other.