I caught a few minutes of a BBC dramatization of one of the Kurt Wallander mysteries this season, but I was distracted and don’t even remember which story it was (it might even have been this one, the first novel of the series). Still, I’ve decided I need to acquaint myself with the booming Scandinavian mystery scene, and so I picked up Faceless Killers
The hero is Detective Kurt Wallander, a policeman in the rural town of Ystad (pronounced EE-stad), Sweden. Wallander is no McGarrett, no supercop. He’s barely keeping it together, in his personal life and his profession. His wife recently left him, which spun him into depression and heavy drinking. His adult daughter simply disappeared from his life, though she makes occasional contact. His artist father is sliding into dementia. Meanwhile at work, it’s his bad luck to be the senior detective on the squad (his superior is on holiday) when an elderly farm couple is brutally murdered in their home. A whispered statement by the female victim suggests a “foreigner” was responsible. Somehow the word gets out, and there are reprisals against local refugee camps.
Wallander manages to do his job creditably, but sometimes it’s touch and go, thanks in particular to exhaustion and imprudent drinking. Leads are followed until they play out, and Wallander manages to get himself pretty severely beaten up more than once. There’s even an almost-comic car chase, in which Wallander follows a suspect driving a stolen car, in a commandeered horse van.
The story lost some steam toward the end, though I had no trouble sticking with it. As a conservative American, I had mixed responses to the ethos of the story. Wallander is surprisingly conservative (it seems to me) for a Swedish cop. Although heartily anti-racist, he has serious doubts about Sweden’s open borders policy, a sentiment which sat pretty well with me. On the other hand, as a typical Swedish civil servant, the idea of a right to bear arms is entirely foreign to his universe. I had a hard time, puritanical American that I am, swallowing his guilt-free pursuit of another man’s wife.
Still, it was an interesting story, and not quite what I expected. I may read more Henning Mankell.
A note on the translation—it could have been a lot better. The translator opted too often for literalism over idiom, and the story suffered for it. I need to get into the translation business. It would appear they need me.
I wish there was a way to do translations that provided both literalness and idiom. I want the clean flow of idiomatic translation, but I also like to here the metaphors of another culture’s thoughts.
That’s always the balance one seeks. Hard to find, and the work is never perfect.
Hello Lars; I’ve got a book on my ‘to read’ pile, by Arnaldur Indriason, and the detective sounds almost identical. (Iceland)
– The Scandinavians seem a bit lit to the table here. If I’m right, is there a reason?
– is there any money in the translation business?
Sr: I don’t know how to read the first question.
There’s some money in translation, but I imagine I’d have to sell myself to somebody, always a difficult job for me.
Apologies; I meant to write ‘the Scandinavians seem a bit ‘late’ to the table.’ (i.e. they seem to have joined the detective novel genre later than most countries.)
Ah well, they’re small countries, and the world at large pays little attention to what goes on in them, aside from the “greats.”
Around the other end of the world….
I’ve been reading Qiu Xiaolong mystery novels from China. He’s great and comes off as another Dick Francis…without the horses. I’ve read 5 of his 6 novels so far and have never regretted any of them. They are really hard to put down!
Japanese murder mysteries however are like Japanese jokes, movies, and many novels… very long winded, very repetitive and long in getting to the point. It seems like, (and I exaggerate just a tad here), that if all the suspects and clues weren’t re-hashed/repeatedly discussed over and over, the mystery novels would be maybe… 50 pages long. I read them because of the cultural info gained… only reason.