|
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Swedish Mess
Title: The Man From Beijing
Author: Henning Mankell
bookmark: a normal bookmark
This is the guy who wrote the Wallander novels (which I only know about because I saw trailers for the TV show when I watched the Sherlock series). Intro portion concluded.
Picture a lovely tiny forest village in Sweden. Very tiny. About a dozen homes, and through marriage, most of the residents are relatives. Nice, if a bit creepy, right? Oh, one more thing: one night in February, somebody with a big damn knife (or maybe a sword) slaughters almost everyone in the village. Even the dogs, cats, and a parrot (who was decapitated). The police find out about it when a photographer fleeing in terror has a coronary and drives into an oncoming truck. His dying word is the name of the village.
Judge Birgitta Roslin finds out about it in the papers a few days later, recognizes the name of the village, and discovers her mother's foster parents were among the victims. Then, like any good fictional character, she launches her own investigation. Unlike every other fictional character investigating outside normal police channels, the cops blow her off.
Roslin keeps digging, pursuing a completely different line of inquiry from the police, and travels to Beijing and London before she has all the answers. Sounds great, right? Except... I still haven't decided whether I like the book. I can't really say it wasn't compelling, because I've started other books, gotten bored with them, and set them aside permanently. I kept reading this one. I'm just not sure there was a good reason for it. I liked that there was an unlikely protagonist, a sort of late-middle-age Miss Marple without as many unlikely gimmicks (I never bought how Marple could easily imitate anyone's voice, nor how she used that trick to get people to confess to the murder of the voice's real owner), but I never really cared about her. At one point, she realizes that someone has given her suspect her home address and thinks the man an old fool, but she spends a great deal of time in the book making really stupid choices and trusting people she's only just met with far too much. The final resolution feels forced, and there's a lot of discussion about China, its politics, economy, and leadership which would be fascinating if I had any idea what opinion the author actually has--it's never clear how we're supposed to feel about things.
Originally, I thought I might wrap up this book, recommended and loaned to me by a co-worker's wife, then try some Wallander, because as anyone can tell, I love a good mystery. After reading it and letting it marinate in my brain a couple days... I think I prefer to dig up some old Hammett or Chandler.Labels: Africa, China, murder, mystery/detective, vengeance
posted by reyn at
4:07 PM
2 Comments:
11/08/2011 2:34 PM
Re: "...there's a lot of discussion about China, its politics, economy, and leadership which would be fascinating if I had any idea what opinion the author actually has--it's never clear how we're supposed to feel about things." (emphasis added)
That may be intentional, and reflect the author's desire to let you form your own opinions. Real world issues are seldom black and white.
11/08/2011 2:34 PM
|
|
