Faceless Killers
I’ve been a fan of Kenneth Branagh’s work since I sat in a theater 20 years ago to see Henry V, and last fall I was pleased to see that he was bringing to PBS a short series in the Mystery franchise titled, Wallander. I think I saw them all, and wanted more when the series ended. I loved the grittiness of the crimes and the atmospheric Swedish countryside, but most of all I was taken with the character Kurt Wallander. His interest in opera reminds me a bit of P. D. James’s poetry-writing inspector Adam Dalgliesh (more excellent work on Mystery).
The writing is spare, unadorned, but capable and never awkward. For a police procedural, it rolls with just the right measure of plot, intrigue and character development, which, like Wallander’s life, gets put on hold while the dirty, difficult work of solving a double murder takes precedence, but it’s that development that provides a background and depth that keeps me reading.
Sample The Faceless Killers in Google Books.
