Faceless Killers (Kurt Wallander Series #1) by Henning Mankell

Faceless Killers (Kurt Wallander Series #1) by Henning Mankell

Read by Dick Hill

8 hours, 59 minutes

Published March 1997 by The New Press

Publisher's Summary: 

It was a senselessly violent crime: on a cold night in a remote Swedish farmhouse an elderly farmer is bludgeoned to death, and his wife is left to die with a noose around her neck. And as if this didn’t present enough problems for the Ystad police Inspector Kurt Wallander, the dying woman’s last word is foreign, leaving the police the one tangible clue they have–and in the process, the match that could inflame Sweden’s already smoldering anti-immigrant sentiments. 

Unlike the situation with his ex-wife, his estranged daughter, or the beautiful but married young prosecuter who has peaked his interest, in this case, Wallander finds a problem he can handle. He quickly becomes obsessed with solving the crime before the already tense situation explodes, but soon comes to realize that it will require all his reserves of energy and dedication to solve.

My Thoughts: I've been hearing about the Kurt Wallander series for years (heck, I've even seen some the  PBS adaptation starring Kenneth Branagh). When I was looking for an audiobook that was available immediately, I wasn't so sure that this was going to work for me, though. I didn't know how graphic it might be, how tense it might make me. Lately I've been drawn more and more to softer fare in books. 

This one surprised me. I didn't find it overly graphic; which isn't to say that there's not some very brutal violence, but Mankell doesn't dwell on it or make it the focus of the book. Instead, Mankell spends a great deal of time focusing on developing his characters and the relationships between them so that while the tension is enough to pull the reader through the book, it is never overwhelming. 

Wallander is a complicated man. His mother died when he was young, his father (an artist who has painted essentially the same painting 7,000 times and makes a living doing that) is beginning to suffer from dementia and never lets Kurt forget how disappointed he is that Kurt chose to become a policeman, his wife has left him, he and his daughter are estranged and Kurt is not entirely sure why, he drinks too much, he eats too much junk food, and he has no moral qualms with having an affair with a married woman. He loves opera, has very few friends, is devoted to solving crimes, and, in this book at least, has a real problem with immigrants (which makes it a timely read but didn't help me to like him). 

Wallander screws up, puts himself in peril repeatedly, and doesn't solve the crime nearly as quickly as they do on television. Months pass between the night of the murder and Wallander and his team solving the case, but I appreciated that things didn't just fall into their laps - it felt much more realistic that way and allowed time to develop the relationships between Wallander and the other characters. 

Will I read more Kurt Wallander? Definitely. Although I wasn't ready to listen to the next book right on the heels of this one, it won't be long because I don't want to lose my familiarity with these characters. 

The Fairbanks Four: Murder, Injustice, and the Birth of a Movement by Brian Patrick O'Donoghue

The Fairbanks Four: Murder, Injustice, and the Birth of a Movement by Brian Patrick O'Donoghue

352 pages 

Published April 2025 by Sourcebooks

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

October, 1997. Late one night in Fairbanks, Alaska, a passerby finds a teenager unconscious, collapsed on the edge of the road, beaten nearly beyond recognition. Two days later, he dies in the hospital. His name is John Gilbert Hartman and he's just turned 15 years old. The police quickly arrest four suspects, all under the age of 21 and of Alaska Native and American Indian descent. Police lineup witnesses, trials follow, and all four men receive lengthy prison terms. Case closed. 

But journalist Brian Patrick O'Donoghue can't put the story out of his mind. When the opportunity arises to teach a class on investigative reporting, he finally digs into what happened to the "Fairbanks Four." A relentless search for the truth ensues as O'Donoghue and his students uncover the lies, deceit, and prejudice that put four innocent young men in jail.

The Fairbanks Four is the gripping story of a brutal crime and its sprawling aftermath in the frigid Alaska landscape. It's a story of collective action as one journalist, his students, and the Fairbanks indigenous community challenge the verdicts. It's the story of a broken justice system, and the effort required to keep hope alive. This is the story of the Fairbanks Four.

My Thoughts: 

Ever since Mini-me and Ms. S moved to Alaska, I've been drawn toward learning more about that state and its people, which is why this book initially caught my eye. But the subtitle is what really pulled me in. The more I read in general, the more aware I am of how often our justice system fails us as a society - corruption, racism, sloppy work, reliance on people who have a lot to gain by saying what the system wants them to say, society's expectation that crimes will be resolved quickly (fueled by watching it happen that way on t.v.). 

I made the mistake of reading this on my phone. I should know better - I don't think any book I've ever read entirely on my phone has ever gotten the fair shake it deserves and I feel certain that my opinion of this book would have been different if I'd have read it on my iPad. It wasn't helped, either, by the fact that I read it during a reading slump and never read it long enough at any one sitting to really get immersed in it. For me, it seemed to drag a bit at time and I got bogged down in trying to keep who was who straight. There are a lot of people involved in this story, from the four young men initially convicted of the murder, to the witnesses, the police, the attorneys, the judges, those working to free the young men, and those working with O'Donoghue to get to the truth of the murder. If I'd have been smart, I would have made myself a list. 

Do you ever watch Dateline or 48 Hours or any of those kinds of shows? If you do, then you're familiar with the way that, as details emerge and depending on who you're listening to, the truth seems to sway first one way and then the next. Even knowing going in (because of course this book wouldn't exist if this weren't true) that the four young men would eventually be exonerated, I still swayed back and forth. Certainly none of these young men were perfect angels, but it was clear early on that a desperately understaffed police department was being pressured to solve this case as quickly as possible by any means possible and that's what they did. 

O'Donoghue, left; the Fairbanks Four, right

O'Donoghue, who had been a newspaperman and then became a college professor, was convinced to look further into the case and used this case as a learning tool for his classes. Others in the native Alaskan community also took up the cause. Even so, it took 18 years of pressure and hundreds of man hours and digging for these men to be released. It took almost another decade before O'Donoghue was able to get the book published; not until the men won settlements from the city did the publisher agree that there was an ending to the story that made it worth publishing. 

As much as I struggled getting through the book (again, my fault more than the book's), it's the first book I've read in a long time that made me want to dig deeper. I discovered that the victim's brother still believes that the four men initially convicted were the real killers and he's extremely angry that they've not only gone free but have won settlements. It was brought home to me, once again, that when someone is released, it's hard to assimilate back into society - imagine how the outside world changed between 1997 and 2015. One of the men had a young daughter when he was imprisoned; by the time he got out, he had two granddaughters. Nothing can bring back everything that these men lost while they were behind bars. 

Life: It Goes On - July 20

Happy Sunday! We are having a very slow start to our day; I've even taken a short nap less than two hours after I crawled out of bed. Felt good but it's time to get productive now. 

First up, get things back up on top of the cupboards. I had to take everything down so Big Guy could paint the walls above the cupboards. Now the paint is dry and everything has been cleaned and I can put that part of the kitchen back together. It would be quick work if I just put things back up where they'd been...but, of course, I'm not doing that because why would I do things the easy way. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers and then spent a couple of days trying to land on something that grabbed me quickly. Robert Edsel's The Monuments Men didn't do it. Neither did Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisted (even with Jeremy Irons reading it), both books I've been wanting to read for a long time. Neither did Tracy Chevalier's The Glassmaker. Finally I landed on B. A. Shapiro's The Art Forger which did stick; a little road trip yesterday has me about half way through that now. A friend recommended Marie Benedict, so I've queued up her Carnegie's Maid to listen to next. 

Watched: I had the t.v. to myself a lot this week so I watched some Queer Eye, Geek Girl (so not my usual thing but mindless so easy to watch while I'm doing other things), Oklahoma (when you've seen something a couple dozen time, it's easy to "watch" it from other rooms) and Once, because I wanted to see the movie that has a song I've loved for years in it. 

Read: I'm happy to report that I'm actually reading again! I finished Elin Hilderbrand's Summerland (so unlike the book cover!) and started Fredrik Backman's My Friends. 

Made: A sausage and veggie pasta, kielbasa and sauerkraut, fettuccine Alfredo, and caprese spaghetti. Wow - until just now I didn't realize how much pasta I'd eaten last week!

Enjoyed: Book club Tuesday, three evenings to myself (love BG but also love quiet nights to myself), and dinner and drinks last night with friends. We went to a Greek place that's beloved here...where I had pastichio (which includes pasta!); then we grabbed drinks at the bar where Miss C works a couple of nights a week. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: Yesterday I picked up a desk I "won" on an auction (that was an adventure!) to replace the one Miss H has been using since I bought it on Facebook Marketplace twelve years ago for $10. If I were keeping it, I'd just clean it up; it's in great shape and pretty. But she's not a fan of its color so it will either get stripped and stained a different color or painted. 

Thinking About: Cabinet colors...still. Some color samples arrived this week so they have been moving around the kitchen, trying different times of day and light. I think I have the base cabinet choice narrowed down to two colors but I'm not at all sure about the uppers yet. You wouldn't think picking a white would be so hard, would you? 

Feeling: I sort of accidentally stumbled into some family genealogy stuff a week ago and now I'm feeling the pull to get back to researching BG's father's side of the family again. I'd done a lot of work on it many years ago and then set it aside entirely. Now I've found some new information from almost 350 years ago that has me excited. 

Looking forward to: Hoping to have our first big tomato ripe this week - there is nothing better on a BLT than a freshly picked tomato! 

Question of the week: Do you garden? If so, what's your favorite thing to grow? 

Good Material by Dolly Alderton

Good Material by Dolly Alderton

Read by Arthur Darvill and Vanessa Kirby

9 hours, 54 minutes

Published January 2024 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped.

Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.

My Thoughts: 

Recently I've had the television to myself more and I've been searching for rom-coms like the ones they made in the 1990's (think Notting Hill, Two Weeks Notice, 10 Things I Hate About You) to no avail. I'm not necessarily looking for that same kind of story; I'm looking for those stories that truly match up romance with comedy, especially those with snappy dialogue. While a movie adaptation of Good Material won't have that same kind of happy ending, there is plenty of heart and humor here that I think would make a great movie. 

I listened to this one and was very much enjoying Andy's side of the story. Sure he's a grown man that needs to accept the fact that it's time to get a big boy job that he can support himself with, notably because his comedy career is going no where and he's unwilling to make any change to his routine. He's grown comfortable with his life and that's part of the problem. In the aftermath of the breakup, he falls into all of the usual traps. But I couldn't help but like him and root for him to grow up...and get over it, to be honest. 

In the back of my mind, as I listened to Andy's story, I kept wondering when that female narrator was going to come in...and then she did, telling us the story from Jen's point of view. And here's the thing, Jen does still love Andy. But Jen can see that, even if Andy changes, theirs is a relationship that simply won't give either of them what they need in life. 

I feel like I may have liked this book more than a lot of other reviewers, many of whom found that Andy was a flat character. But he was surrounded by characters, in my opinion, that helped flesh out his side of the story and make what had happened between Andy and Jen clearer. One reviewer, who read the book in print, felt the switch to Jen's voice was jarring; but, of course, knowing that there were two narrators, I was expecting it and looking forward to hearing her side of the story. Because there are always two sides to a story.