The Troubled Man

I was actually sad to begin this book because I knew it was the last one in the Kurt Wallander series by the late Henning Mankell. I’ve read all the other books in the series plus a couple of his stand alone books and they are my favorite crime novels. This one finds Kurt at a 75th birthday party in Stockholm for Hakan von Enke, a former navy officer who is now retired. Wallander wouldn’t normally be there except that Hakan and his wife Louise are Linda Wallander’s in-laws-to-be. Kurt and Linda see a lot of each other in “The Troubled Man.” Hakan von Enke takes Kurt into a quiet room and tells him the story of a suspected Russian submarine back in the Cold War era that was submerged in Swedish territorial waters and how he had wanted to start releasing depth charges, but it was called off. The submarine finally disappeared without a trace and von Enke was puzzled as to why the order for depth charges had been called off. It was their one chance to make a foreign sub surface. By the next week, Hakan von Enke had disappeared without a trace. Since Stockholm is out of Wallander’s jurisdiction, he starts looking around on his own.

Wallander has turned 60 now and is having a lot of health problems and now is experiencing memory loss. Since he isn’t the sort of person to just go to the doctor, he has neglected his health his whole life and is afraid of what a doctor might say if he does go, so he stays away. He is forced to see the doctor when he has a health crisis, though. After this, he is on vacation time and spends it trying to find out what has happened to Hakan von Enke. The story moves along and becomes quite complicated when accusations fly about the von Enkes and the location changes several times.

I loved this book as I have loved all of the Kurt Wallander books. This one is a more complicated Cold War spy novel that kept my attention all the way through.

If you are considering this book, its because you have already read most of the Wallander books, and you know this is last one. You have probably also read the reviews, most of which are negative.

Im sad to say that they are accurate. The Troubled Man is not only badly written, its a very disappointing conclusion to the Wallander series.

Its bad in so many ways, its hard to know where to start. Mankell commits the original writers sin of telling instead of showing, and does it over and over. There are long narrative explanations as character after character recite their stories about the main characters. And those characters seem to pop up from the pages of the book without context or explanation. Wallander drives here, flies there, talks to people, calls them, considers his mortality, pets his dog, all without the narrative drive that animates Mankell earlier works. We get lots of interaction between Wallander and his daughter, but little development of that relationship. If this was a first novel, it would never have been published.

But of course, it is not a first novel. It was published because it was Mankells last Wallander novel, and it is a disappointing way to take leave of the Swedish detective, and represents, to this reader anyway, a case of literary negligence on Mankells part. It would have been better if he had just let the series stand, and not written this disappointing finale. For my money, I will prefer to think of the final Branagh episode as the end of the Wallander series. The spine of the story is the same, but the script is tighter and handles the balance between the case and Wallanders creeping dementia with much more skill, with Wallanders condition touching the case at a decisive moment, and his relationship for his daughter and granddaughter adding some warmth and heart to the shadow of a slowly graying future.

You may still feel obliged to read this, the final Mankell story, out of a sense of obligation. Thats why I did it, despite the reviews. Just be forewarned that the novel suffers from the same creeping loss of function as its protagonist. This is not the Kurt Wallander you have come to know.

In this final novel of the Kurt Wallander series, Kurt becomes entangled into the disappearance of his daughter Lina’s future father-in-law. A retired Swedish Naval Officer goes for his daily walk from his apartment and disappears. When Wallander travels to investigate at the bequest of his daughter and the wife, he secures the cooperation of the Police Inspector assigned to investigate. The investigation becomes even more complicated when the Naval Officer’s wife, Louise, also goes missing and then is later found dead, an apparent suicide, with incriminating documents in her purse indicating she may have been a spy for the Russians.

At the novel’s start, Wallander has finally moved to the country and has a dog, Jussi, named after an opera singer (did you expect less). Throughout the book, he begins displaying symptoms of forgetfulness and Alzheimer’s. Being Kurt Wallander, he struggles to hide these symptoms from everyone and mostly succeeds.

In this final Kurt Wallander novel there is plenty of intrigue and Kurt eventually unveils a surprising conclusion to the mystery. There is also a surprise conclusion to the mystery.

A fitting novel to end the series. One of the best yet.

I’d struggled with the first book, Faceless Killers, then bought A Troubled Man in response to an Amazon email shot … and ripped through the story. Mature, disconsolate, pessimistic but wise & honourable stuff … much like the hero. Now I’m working my way forward again from the beginning of the series, and that experience is in no way marred by having read Wallander’s (and in essence, Mankell’s) swan song novel. Now I finally see what all the fuss was about …

A beautifully written, unsentimental end for Wallander – an immense effort by the translator. Unlike many authors Mankell has been able to finish with what some see as his greatest creation and he has successfully managed to release him without killing him off and with, apparently, no space for revival. This ending it seems cannot be reversed in the way that the Reichenbach Falls incident could. Although I’ll miss Wallander I am sure that we should trust the author’s sense that enough had been told. Many authors have trouble finding a satisfactory ending to an individual novel, let alone a phenomenon but I think Mankell has gone out at the top with this book. The story itself has at least three major themes: the investigation, written with all the verve and cunning of other Wallander books; heritage in the plot involving Linda, and the exquisitely plotted end for Kurt himself. This really is the best of the Wallander novels, a genuine climax, worth every penny! The political intrigue is gripping.