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The Man Who Smiled (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) | 
 enlarge | Author: Henning Mankell
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 10171
Media: Paperback
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.4
ISBN: 1400095832
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.7374
EAN: 9781400095834
ASIN: 1400095832
Publication Date: September 25, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
After killing a man in the line of duty, Kurt Wallander resolves to quit the Ystad police. However, a bizarre case gets under his skin.
A lawyer driving home at night stops to investigate an effigy sitting in a chair in the middle of the highway. The lawyer is hit over the head and dies. Within a week the lawyer’s son is also killed. These deeply puzzling mysteries compel Wallander to remain on the force. The prime suspect is a powerful corporate mogul with a gleaming smile that Wallander believes hides the evil glee of a killer. Joined by Ann-Britt Hoglund, Wallander begins to uncover the truth, but the same merciless individuals responsible for the murders are now closing in on him.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! January 22, 2007
Leonard Fleisig (Washington, D.C.)
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain:
At least I 'm sure it may be so in Denmark." Hamlet.
And I'm sure, after reading Henning Mankell's "The Man Who Smiled", that it may be so in Sweden as well.
"The Man Who Smiled" is the fourth book in the popular Inspector Kurt Wallander mystery series. An aging attorney has been found dead on a desolate strip of road. The local police think it is an accident brought about by the dense fog that surrounded the area that night. The man's son, also an attorney, seeks out is friend Kurt Wallander to ask for help. He thinks his father has been married. Wallander isn't really interested. He'd killed a man in the line of duty and has been on leave ever since. He has no taste for police work, is loaded up with antidepressants and drinks to excess. But when his friend is found murdered, the same guilt that drove Wallander away from police work compels him to return to help solve the murder of the friend and what may be the murder of the friend's father.
As Wallander returns to work he finds himself thinking that one of Sweden's richest men may have some part in the murders. He is very rich and very powerful. So powerful that he can afford to keep a smile affixed to his permanently suntanned face. It is a smile of condescension and smugness. It is a smile that says "I am untouchable." Wallander battles to put his life back together while he struggles to put together the pieces of a very complex crime puzzle.
Mankell's Kurt Wallander series is often compared to the Martin Beck detective mysteries authored by the husband and wife team of Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall. Wallander, like Beck, is a police detective in Sweden. Unlike Beck, whose beat was Stockholm, Wallander works in the small southern-Swedish city of Ystad. Wallander's work performance is 99 per cent driven by perspiration and only 1 per cent driven by inspiration. He is not Sherlock Holmes but he is smart and he is persistent. As noted, "The Man Who Smiled" is the fourth in the Wallander Series. They have all been enjoyable to read even if the series has its ups and downs. As with any series the reader is either drawn to the main character or bored by the main character. Although Wallander is stoic and a bit plodding I somehow find him to be a compelling character. Mankell has also done a good job in fleshing out the characters of Wallander's police unit.
Ultimately, there is nothing new or unique about the structure of the Wallander books. However, the setting (southern Sweden) and the cast of characters created by Mankell makes these books easy to pick up and a bit harder to put down. If you like police procedurals "The Man Who Smiled" is well worth reading. L. Fleisig
 Dark, Powerful and Impossible to Put Down December 29, 2006
Sara Hackett (from the Darkside)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
Investigator extraordinaire Kurt Wallander of the Ystad Police Force in Sweden has been kind of down, living in isolation for the past year, because he had to kill a man on his last case. Then an old friend, Sten Torstensson, who needs help, because he doesn't believe his father committed suicide, asks Kurt for assistance, but Kurt begs off. He seemingly has no stomach for anymore police work. Then Torstensson dies under suspicious circumstances and now Kurt can't stay away. He ends his sabbatical and goes back to work.
It's not long before Kurt, who is taking anti-depressants and drinking a lot of alcohol, ties in the death of his friend and his friend's father with to a guy who has more money than anybody ought to have, more power too. A rich and powerful guy who kills without a blink, a man who can kill with a smile.
This is the fourth book in the series and was originally published in Sweden in 1994, but the last to be translated into English, so sadly I had to read them out of order, but that didn't take away any of the enjoyment. I love the way Mr. Mankell weaves the very essence of Sweden into his stories and they way he makes his people, especially Kurt Wallander, live and breath. Like each and everyone of the books is in the series, once started, I couldn't put it down.
The police 'procedure' is inside the policeman September 22, 2006
Lynn Hoffman, author:The New Short Course in Wine
12 out of 17 found this review helpful
This is a remarkably low-key book which, in spite of some jolting images, is really about the internal life of a rather undramatic man, Inspector Kurt Wallender of police force in the undramatic town of Ystad, Sweden. Wallender is not a swashbuckling maverick or the cop beset by demons. He is instead, the master of the tiny clue, the small hint and the barely tenuous connection.
When a friend, Sten Torstensson is murdered, Wallender-who has been contemplating retirement-decides to take up the case. The action is excruciatingly slow and there's not much suspense: the reader knows more about the case than the hero. What keeps us involved in this story is the quietly magnetic detective Wallender and the new character Ann-Britt Hoglund.
The title:The Man Who Smiled is incidentally, in reference to the perpetrator, not the detective. The book is one in a series of eight about Wallender, four have been translated so far.
Lynn Hoffman Ph.D. author of The New Short Course in Wine and the forthcoming novel bang-BANG from kunati press.
Another breathtaking Swedish police novel from a master September 9, 2006
Elizabeth T. Smith (Vermillion, SD USA)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
It is occasionally tempting to wonder why a small town in Sweden would have such a run of horrific murders ever since Henning Mankell began writing his deliciously thrilling Kurt Wallander novels. The Man Who Smiled is a page-turner like its predecessors with a well-twisted plot, the usual cast of police characters with the moody backdrop of coastal Sweden's gray skies, rain and wind. Wallander's interior dialogues often mirror the gloomy scenery as he picks his way through the maze of the criminal mind. I am not much of a mystery reader but each of Mankell's books is a gem and The Man Who Smiled is no exception.
 One of the weaker of the Wallander mysteries September 26, 2006
Quincy Durant (California)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
I am a big fan of Mankell's Wallender mysteries, thus I was excited to see that this had finally made available in English. I was struck before I started reading that the gap between its publication in Swedish and its translation into English was very long, several later books that refer to events in this one were actually translated before this. After reading it, I suspect that the delay was because somewhere along the line, people were aware this book was flawed.
In particular, there are several plot elements that simply make no sense. I won't go into the details since they would constitute spoilers. But there were several developments that played key roles in advancing the plot that simply made no sense whatsoever. I thought I was missing something and I talked to some friends and family who are also fans of the Wallender mysteries after they read it, and they had the same reaction.
The writing itself is good, as is the dialogue, so if nonsensical plot developments don't bother you, go ahead and read it. But if you like to follow things consistently, there are several developments that simply don't make sense. Also, this is one of a few Wallender mysteries where I think Mankell pushed too hard to create a climactic and tense ending and ended up creating a situation that was artifical and strained credulity.
If you are a Wallander fan, this is probably worth reading, if only because there are several developments in Wallender's personal life that some of the later books that were translated earlier refer to.
If you are interested in the Wallender books and are looking for one to start with, don't start with this one.
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