Kurt Wallander isn't just my favorite fictional detective. He's one of my favorite characters from any book. When I finished Before the Frost a few years ago, my heart sank at the realization that there was no more Wallander available. I missed his company. I missed hanging out at the Ystad police station with him, drinking endless cups of coffee, having meeting after meeting with colleagues in which the facts of a case are pored over yet again, in the hopes that this time, something new will be...

disappointing...though I'm a Wallander fan, these stories which follow Wallender's early career (written later) seemed mechanical, uninspired, the prose flat and unadorned. Some stories were better than others (wish I could remember which now). Mankell does better with novel-length mysteries than with stories I think. Just skip to the novels*. They vary in quality, but are generally much more absorbing and fun reads.*I'm referring here to his procedural detective novels, the Wallander books, not...

What is it about Swedish mystery writers?First (at least in my consciousness) there were the ten Martin Beck police procedurals of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, published from 1965 to 1975. Now we flock to bookstores and movie theaters to enter the world of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomqvist, who sprang from the mind of the late Stieg Larsson in the captivating form of the Millennium Trilogy.In between there was Kurt Wallender, the moody small-town police inspector created by another masterful

THE PYRAMID is a collection of 5 short mysteries by which Henning Mankell introduces us to Kurt Wallender when he is a 21 year-old patrolman investigating the first homicide of his career. In a foreward, Mankell explains that he has received many inquires over the years about what happened to Wallender in the years before he receives the phone call the begins the first book in the series, FACELESS KILLERS. Mankell acknowledges that there have been inconsistencies in Wallender’s story as it stret...

It was interesting reading Wallander's first case which included a bit about the political environment in Sweden. Really not a bad collection of short stories.Interestingly enough, I think my audiobook was read by the same narrator that did the Martin Beck books - also set in Sweden by Swedish authors.

I am loathe to give this book only two stars because Henning Mankell is one of my favorite mystery authors and I eagerly await new installments (i.e., translations) with his character, Kurt Wallander. (How thrilling to discover a PBS Mystery series of Wallander, played by Kenneth Brannaugh!) This book includes four stories that go back to the beginning of Wallander's career as an investigator, supposedly fleshing out those experiences that the other books only allude to. But I keep thinking that...

Henning Mankell is one of my favourite crime authors. His Wallander novels are darkly atmospheric, with a bleakness that is somehow compelling.The Pyramid is a collection of short stories written mainly in the late nineties. They fill in some of the earlier points of Wallander's career, starting with his time as a young policeman in the late sixties, and his very first case as a detective.I think perhaps Mankell's techniques of plot revelation work better in a longer form - I found that the paci...

So I read "Faceless Killers" back in 2016 and never got back to the Kurt Wallander series. I enjoyed the tv show starring Kenneth Branagh and always meant to try to give the series another go when I got a chance.I dithered between 3 and 4 stars and mostly that's because it seemed this collection showing Kurt through the years prior to the start of the first book in the series doesn't really give us any more insight into him and at times seems to contradict things that we know about him. It just

Have read other Wallander full novels and enjoyed them as I have enjoyed watching the series, but this book does not serve as a good intro. It is filling in blanks with several shorts, and had I read this first I would never have pursued the novels. Stilted telling with little hope that Wallander will wake up...(not exaggerating as he even walks himself into a serious knife stabbing).It was a fresh and clean paperback from my library so that was good. Pyramid was probably the best tale of the bu...

I enjoyed hearing about Wallander’s first cases but I liked the last story, The Pyramid the best.

"Wallander woke up shortly after six o'clock on the morning of the eleventh of December. At the same moment that he opened his eyes, his alarm clock went off. He turned it off and lay staring out into the dark. Stretched his arms and legs, spread his fingers and toes. That had become a habit, to feel if the night had left him with any aches. He swallowed in order to check if any infection had sneaked into his respiratory system. He wondered sometimes if he was slowly becoming a hypochondriac."

I am closing in on the end of my time with Kurt Wallander -- only a couple of books to go after this -- and I am a little sad to be saying goodbye to the depressing Swedish cop. As Mankell says, "It is the fans who will miss Wallander." Just so. This volume is a nice beginning of the end for me. A stack of stories that span Wallander's career and give some fantastic insights into his character. It has the added benefit of being the perfect book for a vacation trip: five self-contained mysteries,...

A rather unnecessary book - five stories that constitute a prequel to the Wallander series, beginning when Kurt is just a lad starting out on the police force in the 60s and not yet married to malcontent hairdresser Mona. Apparently there was a great hue and cry from Mankell fans, in the form of letters, wanting to know what had happened to Wallander before the series began. (Personally I never wondered. It was enough for me to believe that the divorced 40-something curmudgeon sprang fully grown...

This is a collection of five short mysteries outlining the beginning of Kurt Wallander's career. They are enjoyable whether or not you've read any other Wallander books, but if you haven't, I highly recommend them! Mankell wrote these after he finished the first eight books in the series. He said he had been thinking about the stories all along, especially when readers began asking him what Wallander's history was and what had molded the detective's rather gloomy character. Definitely an enjoyab...

Well this is truly an exception to my usual preferences. I ordinarily rather disdain the short story, like the novella much more than most, and dislike the most verbose of 90 adjectives a paragraph "lyrical" tomes of 500 plus pages. But here, not so much. In fact, I thought the 4 short stories were a full 4 and that the Pyramid length of fuller length was a 3. And thinking about this at length (I finished all these on a 7 day trip and never reviewed them)- I do realize that with Wallander on the...

The Pyramid and Other Stories is a prequel written to Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series, much of which was written after the fifth book was written. In a prologue to this volume, Mankell makes it clear that the stories came about largely in response to fan questions about The Young Wallander, as the first book he wrote about Wallander takes place when the detective is in his early forties. Mankell also said as he was looking back on the whole series (which he assumed ended with Firewall at...

The essence of small-town Scandi crime is distilled into this collection of five shorter Wallander stories, all set in the years before the full-length novels. These standalone mysteries almost act like a ‘secret origin’ series as the detective’s keynote characteristics become increasingly apparent in each episode.Each of the stories showcases an intriguing investigation – they’re worth reading even if you’re not so familiar with Mankell’s typical mix of murder amid daily mundanity. In fact the

I've grown very fond of the two TV series of Wallander with Krister Henriksson but hadn't read any of the novels. In a way these stories/novellas, written after the novels but set before them, are probably a pretty good place to start. Exploring some episodes in KW's early career, and his relationships with his father, wife, and daughter, none of the stories outstays their welcome. The last one, The Pyramid, is the longest and the best one. Even in the shortest stories I find the minute details

The PBS series starring Kenneth Brannagh got me interested in Wallander, but reading this book really got me hooked. This seemed like a great place to start, as the stories fill in some of the gaps in Wallander's career as a rookie cop, and then later working his way up the ranks. On that score, there seems to be a pretty big temporal leap from "rookie" Wallender to the nearly fully realized one, but I guess an author can only write the stories he's inspired to write. As much or more as they fil...