The author (1948-2015) from ĭuring one of my periodic efforts to prove to myself that I'm not one of The Great Unwashed, I watched PBS's Masterpiece Mystery series featuring the Swedish detective Kurt Wallander as played by Kenneth Branagh. There’s a bit of local color of Sweden and I liked the map that allows you to follow the action around the southern section of the country, especially around Ystad, a real city where the detective is based. I thought it was a very good mystery and better than the other one I read and reviewed, The Man Who Smiled. This book is the first in the series of eleven. The style of the Wallander series is that of a police procedural. Wallander and his team have to investigate these additional crimes as these Nazis murder one man, injure others, and set fire to a local immigrant refugee camp. This gets leaked to the press and starts a frenzy of anti-immigrant feelings among the neo-Nazi types of Sweden who want immigration to cease and foreigners to be deported.

The only initial clue is that the female victim said the word ‘foreigner’ just before she died. The main crime to be solved is the brutal torture and murder of an elderly farm couple who lived in an isolated house.

And gaining weight because without his wife cooking, he eats only junk food. The detective’s elderly father lives alone in a farmhouse and is getting dementia, walking through the fields with suitcases in the night. He is estranged from his wayward daughter who travels around the world not telling her parents where she is and appearing unexpectedly for brief times. He may be falling in love with a beautiful young prosecutor, but she is married. His wife left him three months ago and she is filing for divorce. But Swedish detective Kurt Wallander has so many things going on that it would take a full hour with Dr. All detectives have to have their personality quirks and personal problems to keep the story interesting.

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell