Faceless Killers
Ratings64
Average rating3.4
My first Wallander, and definitely not my last. I love how terrible his indigestion is, and how he's always tired.
Also I didn't expect action scenes, and this had action scenes! Pretty nifty!
A great crime novel with a Tana French feel. Real character development, coupled with a solid story and all the musts of a police procedural. I enjoyed this and I am now very much looking forward to Kurt Wallander's next case.
It's not unexpected that this wasn't my cup of tea. I read this to check off the “Nordic Noir” prompt for the PopSugar challenge, and I struggled to find a qualifying book that I could tolerate - it's just not a genre I like much. Noir in general isn't my thing.
The police procedural component was serviceable enough. The mystery wasn't terribly satisfying, but the investigation was interesting. But that was only about half of the book - the other half concentrated on the main character's personal experiences, which can be roughly summarized into the categories of being pathetic and getting injured. But I guess this is also a pretty classic noir trope.
Oh well, I tried something different - and it had the virtue of being pretty skimmable!
Part of my lukewarm reception to this book was the mistake of watching the series first. This book was an episode from the second or third season so it was pretty familiar to me. But Wallander was not a likable character here in the books. Sure, he has his faults on the show, but here he's just a plain jerk who (of course) drinks too much and has driven all his family away.