Faceless Killers
Read the first thrilling Kurt Wallander novel
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- 8,99 €
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- 8,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
'Wallander is among the very best fictional crimebusters' Daily Telegraph
One frozen January morning at 5am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he believes is a routine call out. When he reaches the isolated farmhouse, he discovers a bloodbath.
An old man has been tortured and beaten to death, his wife lies barely alive beside his shattered body, both victims of a violence beyond reason. The woman supplies Wallander with his only clue: the perpetrators may have been foreign. When this is leaked to the press, it unleashes a tide of racism.
Wallander's life is a shambles. His wife has left him, his daughter refuses to speak to him, and even his ageing father barely tolerates him. He works tirelessly, eats badly, and drinks his nights away. But now Wallander must forget his troubles and throw himself into a battle against time and against mounting racial hatred.
Discover the first novel in the addictive Wallander series.
'Mankell is one of the most ingenious crime writers around. Highly recommended' Observer
'Mankell is in the first division of crime writing' The Times
Kundenrezensionen
Too Many Clichés
The book’s strengths (mainly the characterisation of its protagonists and the detailed description of the painstaking investigation) is marred by a surfeit of stereotypes and old tropes: alcoholic policeman, “exotic knot” (seriously, this trope has been done to death), violent crimes linked to East Europeans etc. More seriously ‘though, while the book criticises xenophobia and racism, it more than once veers into that very same territory. The worst example of this is when a Somali man is killed by a neo-nazi, and the book merely describes the man’s wife as the “hysterical widow.” Not once, but several times, and without adding a mere hint of sympathy for, or indeed a description of, the bereaved woman; this is in stark contrast to the attention and sympathy that almost all (Swedish) characters in the book get - good guys or bad.