Henning Mankell’s Pyramid and Four Other Kurt Wallander Mysteries . . . Henning Mankell is Swedish and has—who would have guessed it—created a Swedish detective in Kurt Wallander. Sweden is a very different country culturally and politically from the U.S. and its policing is different in some respects, similar in others. That gives these short stories and their central character, a police detective, extra dimensions that add interest to each of the different plots.

Putting these mysteries together as they are is, to me, almost a stroke of editing genius. These mysteries were written at different times, some have run in newspapers, two have not seen the light of day until this book was published. (Mankell, in his foreword, sets the tone for the stories in the book. Please don’t miss it.)  Mankell wrote Wallander’s First Case long after the others, in response to readers who expressed interest in knowing some back story of Kurt Wallander and how he got to be who he is. Continue reading »