Customer Reviews
Meet Inspector Wallander - By: Annabel Gaskell, 02 May 2008 
If not the best police proceduralin terms of plot, this is certainly a good introduction to Inspector Kurt Wallander. He's a newly single grumpy forty-something who frets about his family; but he is a good, conscientious policeman who's not afraid of doing the hard stuff himself. When a gruesome double murder is committed on a farm outin the country, it takes graftin the dull Swedish winter to track down the faceless killers of the title. We don't find out much more about his family or colleaguesin this first volume, but I look forward to reading many more.
The review I read....... - By: T. M. Chaney, 16 Mar 2008 
.....must have been writeen by Mankell's best friend or agent. On the strength of it I bought the book & how shallow, slow, drab, grey & conclusivly dull & predictable it was too. I hate detective fiction where the people who did it enter the book ten pages from the end. Setin the Swedish winterin places that sound about as appealing as frostbite, Wallender, Manning's ace detective,is a real uninspiring bore (who wants to know that he diorea everyday & looks down at his underpants & realises they need changing?) & his team aren't much better. They is no character you don't care if they carry on living or not. I gave it two starts instead of one, as I presume, given Mankell's output of Wallender 'mysteries' he must have improved or maybe the buying population of the villages & town he mentions is enough to maintain a living by.
Surprise package - By: Scully Bloke, 09 Feb 2007 
I was bought this book as a Christmas present. I had never heard of the author or the detective who is the main character.
However what an absolute delight. A real story about a detectivein a small police forcein Sweden. Normally he has to deal with petty crime so when a very violent double murder is uncovered our detective "Kurt Wallander" has a problem on his hands.
What is exceptionally good about this book is the development of the main character Wallander. His wife has left him, his father is on the start of suffering from dimentia & his daughter wont talk to him. This is story of a policeman working laboriously through what small clues there are, managing his private life, yet it is done with a very ydry humour through out the book.
Loved it
"For murder, though it have no tongue - By: Leonard Fleisig, 19 Jan 2007 will speak with most miraculous organ." Hamlet.
An aging farmer & his wife have been brutally attacked on their isolated farmin southern Sweden. They appear to have little money & no enemies. The only clue, if you can call it that is the dying word of the farmer's wife: "foreign". The police have have little else to go on but go on they must. That is the plot for Henning Mankell's first Kurt Wallander detective mystery: "Faceless Killers". The result is a well-done police procedural.
My `discovery' (I know he has already been discovered by millions of readers) of the Kurt Wallander series was the natural result of my reading a series of "Martin Beck" detective mysteries by the husband & wife team of Per Wahloo & Maj Sjowall. Wallander, like Beck, is a police detectivein Sweden. Unlike Beck, whose beat was Stockholm, Wallander worksin the small southern-Swedish city of Ystad. The Wallander series takes placein the 1990s while the Beck series took placein the 1960s & 1970s.
Since this book is the firstin a series, it provides the reader with a great deal of background information on the main characters. Wallander is gritty & determined. He is also newly separated from his wife & estranged from his daughter. Further, his father is showing the first signs of senility. Wallander sometimes drinks too much & is clumsyin his dealings with the interim prosecutor, an attractive young woman sent down from Stockholm.
The book moves along at a relatively quick pace. Mankell does a good job of keeping the pot boiling without revealing too much too quickly. The detectives follow false leads & their fallibility adds a nice veneer of realism to the story. The importance of the farmer's wife's last word "foreign" is clear but its meaning is not fully revealed (or proven) until the book's climax.
I enjoyed "Faceless Killers". Although there was nothing uniquely creative or groundbreaking about the plot or its resolution, Mankell tells a good story. He also manages to evoke a compelling picture of life (and police work)in an area as far from Stockholm as you are likely to get. As such these books make a nice contrast with the Martin Beck series. (Mankell does make a quick reference to one of the Beck books, "The Laughing Policeman", so it seems clear that the obvious comparisons between the two books & series are also clear to Mankell.
"Faceless Killers" is worth reading. While I don't think it was the best bookin the series (the natural result of having to spend a lot of time with the requisite development of a large number of characters that populate a series), I think it is worth reading. I've read two other Wallander books ("The Dogs of Riga" & "Side-Tracked") to date & have enjoyed both of them. If you like police procedurals & like the idea of a somewhat exotic (if cold) setting, I think you will like "Faceless Killers". L. Fleisig.
A Good, Lazy Thriller - By: B. Paszylk, 05 Jan 2007 
The book is no doubt well-written, with the main character - a weary police officer named Kurt Wallander - being very convincing & interesting, but it seems the crime itself is secondary to everything else that happens here (Wallander's love life, his problems with his daughter & an old father). Still - it's a pleasure to read the novel (in spite of some cruelty & the fact that certain characters ooze pessimism), just don't expect a classic 'whodunnit'; the answers to the questions "Who?" & "Why?" are usually deliveredin a rather lazy manner, & all too often we only get them thanks to a surprising coincidence or pure good luck rather than because of Wallander's crime-solving skills.
