It's not the bright sunny, northern summer days, it's the long, dark, dank, cold, sleepless, foggy nights, when Wallander is alone with his fears or in solitary pursuit of a psychotic killer, that creep off the page and take hold of you. At times, Mankell simply wraps us in evil atmosphere.
How did Kurt Wallander become the angry, insecure, single-minded investigator we first encountered in Faceless Killers?
Well, The Pyramid and its accompanying short stories finally give us some of that fascinating background. From Wallander's First Case, which shows him as a young beat copper trying to solve a murder in his off-duty hours, these stories track his early career in the latter part of the twentieth century. It must be difficult to backtrack with such an established character, but Mankell has done a good job of unravelling some of Wallander's ingrained traits and taking them back to their origins. We are treated to his early insecurity and confusion in his knife-edge relationships with Mona and his father. Meanwhile we see the development of his rigour and dogged determination to get to the root cause. If you listened to Wallander himself, you would believe he was the slowest, dumbest cop in the force but, of course, he is rising like cream to the top, although he may be closer to the truth when it comes to his personal relationships. These are thrilling stories.
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