Firewall (Kurt Wallander Series #8)

by Henning Mankell

Overview

The mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander • From the dean of Scandinavian noir, the eighth riveting installment in the internationally bestselling and universally acclaimed Kurt Wallander series.

A body is found at an ATM the apparent victim of heart attack. Then two teenage girls are arrested for the brutal murder of a cab driver. The girls confess to the crime showing no remorse whatsoever. Two open and shut cases. At first these two incidents seem to have nothing in common, but as Wallander delves deeper into the mystery of why the girls murdered the cab driver he begins to unravel a plot much more involved complicated than he initially suspected. The two cases become one and lead to conspiracy that stretches to encompass a world larger than the borders of Sweden.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400031535
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/09/2003
Series:	Kurt Wallander Series , #8
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.92(d)

About the Author

Henning Mankell is the internatinally acclaimed, bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander novels.  Mankell's novels have been translated into forty-five languages and have sold more than forty million copies worldwide. He was the first winner of the Ripper Award and also received the Glass Key and the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger, among other awards. His Kurt Wallander mysteries have been adapted into a PBS television series starring Kenneth Branagh. During his life, Mankell divided his time between Sweden and Mozambique, where he was artistic director of the Teatro Avenida in Maputo. He died in 2015.

Hometown:

Mozambique, Africa

Date of Birth:

February 3, 1948

Place of Birth:

Stockholm, Sweden

Education:

Folkskolan Elementary Shool, Sveg; Högre Allmäna Läroverket, Borås

Editorial Reviews

"Well-paced...a thinking man's thriller." —The New York Times Book Review

“Satisfying…. [Mankell's] Sweden, cold, isolated and brimming with disappointment—is as intriguing a landscape as Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles or Charles Willeford's Miami." —The Wall Street Journal

“Wonderful! Police procedural with personal texture.” —Associated Press

From the Publisher

When two dead bodies show up in the Swedish town of Ystad, the aging and disheartened police detective Kurt Wallander begins to investigate the murders as the press attacks his reputation. Mankell delivers a solid mystery with excellent buildup and dynamic characters, and Dick Hill's delivery keeps the tension taut through the story. Hill's gruff voice perfectly brings the downtrodden Wallander to life, but other characters' voices are sometimes unconvincing. Hill uses the same tone and pitch for all characters, rendering men and women confusingly interchangeable. The liberal use of audible sighs, snorts and chortles pull listeners deep into the narrative, and Hill should also be commended for his smooth reading of Swedish names and places. A Vintage paperback. (Apr.)

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Publishers Weekly

In Golden Dagger Award winner Mankell's (www.henningmankell.com) eighth entry in the Kurt Wallander series—all previous entries are also available from Blackstone Audio—meaningless crimes underscore the vulnerability of society in the electronic age. Mankell contrasts themes of international intrigue involving a global financial network collapse with situations listeners might view on the local news. The multitude of characters challenges award-winning narrator Dick Hill (www.dickhill.com) to distinguish clearly among them all, but textual attributions mitigate confusion. The Wallander novels have recently been adapted for television (BBC, 2008), with Kenneth Branagh playing the eponymous police inspector. Highly recommended. [Audio clip available through www.blackstoneaudio.com.—Ed.]—Sandy Glover, Camas P.L., WA

—Sandy Glover

Library Journal

Despite 30 years of down-and-dirty police work, there are some things Swedish Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander's never seen, and he finds the murder of an Ystad cab driver by two middle-class girls, one barely a teenager, impossible to accept, depressing enough to generate first-time thoughts of quitting. The meaninglessness of the crime, the girls' bland resistance to anything resembling guilt, has him projecting onto them a final breakdown of civility and everything that implies. "We live in a vulnerable society," he tells himself darkly. But the killing is not the uncomplicated act of savagery it seemed at the outset. It turns out to have links to other cold-blooded murders and beyond them to the kind of quintessential 21st-century conspiracy a traditional cop-even one as skilled as Wallander-isn't equipped to plumb. He can only conclude dispiritedly that "we're hunting electronic elk." Even out of his depth, though, Wallander still retains an unquenchable curiosity wrapped in a spirit of pure bulldog-a relentlessness that prevents crimes in his bailiwick, even those he doesn't understand, from going unsolved. Relying on help from unlikely sources and ad hoc alliances to shore up his acknowledged information-age shortcomings, he catches the perps, foils the conspirators, and brings all concerned to justice-though not before suffering painfully himself from betrayal, that most bitter and old-fashioned of crimes. Though the case is as overstuffed as you'd expect from exhaustive Mankell (The Fifth Woman, 2000, etc), resolute Wallander, lonely, unhappy, even at times desperate, is as magnetic as ever.

Kirkus Reviews

Three apparently unrelated deaths eventually prove connected to a plot to destroy the world economy, and Inspector Kurt Wallander must put the pieces together before it's too late. Dick Hill presents the latest in Mankell's detective series with extreme precision. Hill's exaggeratedly correct pronunciation of every Swedish name and place slows the story, rather than lending it authenticity. Hill enunciates every word in the narrative, sacrificing pace in favor of clarity. His portrayals of supporting characters render them cartoonish rather than realistic, especially the women. Overall, his performance, combined with clunky writing and predictable yet unrealistic plot twists, renders this production less than satisfying. R.L.L. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2009 - AudioFile