The Man Who Smiled is number four in the Wallander series, picking up some time after Wallander's experiences in book 3, The White Lioness. As book four opens, Wallander is still on sick leave, and has made the decision during a period of incredibly intense depression that he will not be continuing on in his career as a policeman. But all of that changes when a friend seeks him out to ask him for help regarding the case of his father's death. The police had ruled it a car accident, but the frien...

This is a real crock of a book.Wallander is depressed cause he shot a crim and still has relationship problems with his father - which is just layed on as a break from the investigation to show that he has problems outside work.Is he coming back into the police after his bout with depression and hard drinking. Yes he is and on day one - he is given the case of a father and son pair of solicitors who are murdered. And he is welcomed back as a returning hero.For a crime book - this contains no red...

Every time I read a Mankell book, I'm reminded why I keep picking up one of his books out of hundreds on my to-read list. I just love his stories and his writing. I read more of Henning Mankell than any other authors, living or dead. That must have said something, right? Now that I have read most of his books, I am going to ration myself. I want him to beat cancer and keep writing - my fingers are firmly crossed and he has my prayers, I know that he will always be one of the greatest, as well as...

“Who is this Harderberg? A monster?”“He’s a friendly, suntanned man who’s always smiling,” Wallander said. “He’s also elegantly dressed. There are lots of ways a monster can look.”

What a creepy bad guy! KW is such a broken, sad man, but a brilliant police man. He will get his man, no matter what he has to do.

I love how each chapter in Wallander’s life is like a roller coaster ride. His relationship with both his father and his daughter bring him so much grief and yet he doesn’t really understand why.This 4th novel starts with Wallander unable to cope with events that took place 18 months previously and so is on indefinite sick leave from work. He is contemplating leaving the police force until he has an unexpected meeting from an old acquaintance.From then on the story starts to unravel with so many...

The opening of the fourth novel in this series finds Kurt Wallander in a deep depression. At the conclusion of the last book, he shot a man to death, and even though it was clearly a case of self-defense, he's devastated by the fact that he has taken another man's life. After brooding over the incident for more than a year, Wallander resolves to quit the police force and is at the point of turning in his papers when a very bizarre case grabs his attention.An elderly lawyer has died. The reader k...

Evil! 😈That’s the only description that I have, for “the man who smiled.” An attorney is found murdered on the side of the road. No one suspects murder…except the son of the victim. An old friend of Wallander comes for a visit, so he asks him for help investigating. Another murder.This is one of the most suspenseful books by Henning, that I have ever read. It kept me glued to my iPad. Unable to breathe. Scared to death for Wallander. Frightening.

The fourth Kurt Wallander novel, The Man That Smiled, I liked the least so far, though it’s still good, and part of the continuing story of the sad sack cop. As opposed to the more ambitious third book, The White Lionness, that takes place in Sweden and South Africa and involves a (thwarted) assassination attempt, The Man That Smiled takes place, as does the first novel, Faceless Killers, in (mostly) Sweden. It begins with Wallander on vacation, miserable because in that last case he had killed

Book ReviewThe second review of two crime novels whose titles hint at laughter and joy, Mankell's novel The Man Who Smiled is in my opinion the best to date in the Wallander series. In the first review, we discovered the significance of how morose Martin Beck finally came to emit a burst of laughter in the last paragraph of that novel: The Laughing Policeman. I find this significant. Let's face it: laughter, joy, humor, these are not exactly the words I would describe as pertinent to Nordic crim...

This is my second book in this police procedural series, set in a small city in southern Sweden. I found this less than fully compelling. Here are some of my problems with the book:1. The pacing is slow, and the book bogs down a bit in the middle.2. The mystery at the heart of the book is suspected financial crime by the principal of a large and secretive complex of businesses. The murder of several people, and the attempted murder of a couple of others, trigger the police investigation and appa...

Wonderful book. Presenting truly how police work impacts a man's psyche. The shooting, though justifiable, weighs heavily on Kurt. A year has passed and he is resolved, after 25 years service, to retire from the police force.During a visit to Denmark, he is visited by Sten Torstensson, an old friend, now practicing lawyer in his father's firm. His father had been recently found dead in an "accident". Kurt declines his request to investigate the matter deeper.Returning to Sweden, he finds an obit...

On my list of favorite detectives, Kurt Wallander is close to the top where Inspector Morse resides with Armand Gamache and Guido Brunetti. Although I thought this book was fine, it wasn't my favorite Wallander or my favorite Henning Mankell, for that matter; far from it. There was some wonderfully evocative moodiness and the usual good characterizations, but very little suspense and a lot of clunky translation; I don't understand why the latter would have occurred, as the book was translated by...

I love the gloomy, foggy, windy, damp, or bitterly cold (etc.) Swedish setting, which mirrors Kurt Wallander's depression, angst, and solitude. The unraveling of the mystery is a bit less complicated than you'd like it to be.

This must be included in the "Scandinavian crime"-phenomenon by the gravitational pull of others (including some of Mankell's granted). The bad guy (the smiling one) is so far from believable that it makes the book virtually unreadable. I did finish it, but I don't remember why.

I rounded it up to 3 stars. Not my favorite one, but I still want to continue with the series.