"Firewall" Henning Mankell

One of the reasons I have put a ban on buying books in 2010 is that I often buy the same book multiple times. "Firewall" is an example of this; I bought the hardback version for He-who-caters-to-my-every-whim to read, and then promptly forgot about that and downloaded it from audible.com, too. The ban on books is an attempt to stop the madness.

I have always enjoyed police procedurals, but as far as I can remember, I have only read ones written by people outside of the United States. My interest in the Martin Beck series set in Sweden led me to begin reading the Kurt Wallander series, also set in Sweden. A timeline of the series shows that the order the books were written in does not match the timeline of Wallander’s life. “Firewall” is the eighth of thirteen books written by Mankell thus far in this series.

I started listening to “Firewall" in December while I was driving back and forth from Indianola to Stuttgart, Arkansas, and finished it in January while traveling to my in-laws. I was in Arkansas because my mother was dying, so I am not sure if the darkness I experienced while listening to “Firewall” was due to my mood or due to the book itself. The book begins with the funeral of a boy who had been involved in a previous case of Wallander’s. He thinks he failed the boy in some way and that combined with the constant cold that Wallander has sets a grim tone for the beginning of the story. The action of the book starts with two crimes that seem to be unrelated, but regardless Wallander picks at the stories relentlessly. It is this persistence that I liked about the first Martin Beck books, especially in “Roseanna” where it took Beck and his team months to solve the murder. I don’t think it will spoil much to say that the deaths in “Firewall” are related and lead to a much larger and more interesting crime.

Like the Martin Beck series, the detectives and technicians in Wallander’s team are an ensemble cast. Having jumped into the eighth book, I am not sure how their relationships developed, but “Firewall” is self-contained and I did not miss the back story. On the other hand, I am interested in reading other books in the series, because there is more to learn about these characters. I found the parts about Wallander’s quest for female companionship some of the most intriguing bits of the story, regardless of the outcome. Wallander is constantly ill, and having since read “The Pyramid,” a prequel to the series, I see that his illnesses are a constant that make me want to yell at him to take better care of himself.

The book was narrated by Dick Hill, and it took awhile to become accustomed to the rhythm of his voice. It sometimes seemed that Hill was reading the sentences word by word instead of as a sentence, as if he was purposefully trying not to read too fast. Instead of reading a sentence like “Wallander sighed deeply,” Hill would actually sigh as if he was performing instead of reading. I’m not sure whether I liked the sighing or not. “Faceless Killers” is in my listening library now, and I am a little disappointed that Dick Hill is the narrator of that book also. It is disconcerting to change narrators in the middle of a series of books, because each has his or her own interpretation of the reading, and it is particularly disconcerting to change from a male to female narrator, or vice versa. In this case I would have welcomed a new reader, but will be happy with the continuity nonetheless.