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90th out of 91 books
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Firewall (Wallander #8)
Seventh in the Kurt Wallander series.
A body is found at an ATM the apparent victim of heart attack. Then two teenage girls are arrested for the brutal murder of a cab driver. The girls confess to the crime showing no remorse whatsoever. Two open and shut cases. At first these two incidents seem to have nothing in common, but as Wallander delves deeper into the mystery ...more
A body is found at an ATM the apparent victim of heart attack. Then two teenage girls are arrested for the brutal murder of a cab driver. The girls confess to the crime showing no remorse whatsoever. Two open and shut cases. At first these two incidents seem to have nothing in common, but as Wallander delves deeper into the mystery ...more
Paperback, 416 pages
Published
September 9th 2003
by Vintage
(first published January 1st 2000)
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Jennifer
rated it
Recommends it for:
fans of chewy reads that take time
Recommended to Jennifer by:
a large % of CLC's Biology Department
With each Kurt Wallander mystery I read, I'm more and more impressed with Mankell's ability to create a Swedish police procedural that pulls you in--no matter how dense the "procedural" aspects of the case are. Like the first book I read (Faceless Killers), this is no thriller with aspirations for movie-dom (you know the ones) though there are suspenseful moments. Instead, this is a layered, complex telling of two seemingly unrelated cases and how Wallander and his team slowly tease ...more
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There is no doubt that the Scandinavian crime novels I have read thus far fail to disappoint. After reading Stieg Larsson and now my first Henning Mankell, either the Swed's are really creative in creating some really messed up situations or Sweden is a pretty messed up place to live.
This crime is relatively twisted and complex, but I didn't find the ending as exciting as other crime novels, hence the 4 star rating.
The investigator at the forefront of the story is Kurt...more
This crime is relatively twisted and complex, but I didn't find the ending as exciting as other crime novels, hence the 4 star rating.
The investigator at the forefront of the story is Kurt...more
Brandmauer = Firewall :)
Dies ist der Abschluss der Wallanderreihe, wenngleich nicht das letzte Buch, da es noch die Kurzgeschichten in "Wallanders erster Fall" gibt. Zur Geschichte: Zwei Teenie-Girls ermorden einen Taxifahrer und geben als sie gefasst werden an, es wäre wegen des Geldes gewesen. Ein Computerfachmann wird tot vor einem Geldautomaten gefunden und wenngleich es so scheint als wäre es ein natürlicher Tod gewesen verdichten sich die Hinweise, dass irgend etwas ...more
Dies ist der Abschluss der Wallanderreihe, wenngleich nicht das letzte Buch, da es noch die Kurzgeschichten in "Wallanders erster Fall" gibt. Zur Geschichte: Zwei Teenie-Girls ermorden einen Taxifahrer und geben als sie gefasst werden an, es wäre wegen des Geldes gewesen. Ein Computerfachmann wird tot vor einem Geldautomaten gefunden und wenngleich es so scheint als wäre es ein natürlicher Tod gewesen verdichten sich die Hinweise, dass irgend etwas ...more
I first got exposed to Wallander and Mankell through the PBS mystery series and got immediately hooked because I used to gobble up books by Sjoewall and Wahloo. Let me say upfront, if you like realistic, modern crime drama that does not paint routine policy work as a series of great inspirations and glorified thoughts, these books are definitely for you.
The story is not idealized, it shows the police as human beings, flawed to the core, struggling with everyday problems of their own and dr...more
The story is not idealized, it shows the police as human beings, flawed to the core, struggling with everyday problems of their own and dr...more
Stopping to get money from a cash machine one evening, a man inexplicably falls to the ground: dead. A taxi driver is brutally murdered by two teenaged girls. Quickly apprehended they appall local policemen with their total lack of remorse. One girl escapes police custody and disappears without trace. Soon afterwards a blackout covers half the country. When an engineer arrives at the malfunctioning power station, he makes a grisly discovery. Inspector Kurt Wallander is sure that these even...more
6. Oktober 1997: Der Programmierer Tynnes Falk erleidet vor einem Bankautomat einen Herzinfarkt. Die Teenager Eva Persson und Sonja Hökberg erschlagen einen Taxifahrer mit einem Hammer Sonja Hökberg flieht aus dem Polizeirevier und stirbt kurz darauf auf spektakuläre Weise in einem Umspannwerk in der Nähe von Ystad.
Kurz darauf wird in der Wohnung von Tynnes Falk auf Wallander geschossen und Tynnes Falks Leiche verschwindet aus dem Leichenschauhaus um einige Tage später ohne die Fingerkuppen...more
Kurz darauf wird in der Wohnung von Tynnes Falk auf Wallander geschossen und Tynnes Falks Leiche verschwindet aus dem Leichenschauhaus um einige Tage später ohne die Fingerkuppen...more
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Mankell, Henning. FIREWALL. (1998). *****. Mankell places his Inspector Kurt Wallander right in the middle of a series of events that turns out to be more than the sum of its parts. It all starts out when a man falls over dead in front of an ATM unit near his home. The death was pronounced the result of natural causes. Next, two young girls send for a taxi from a bar. After they are in it, they kill the driver using a hammer and a knife. They are quickly rounded up and held at the main ...more
Number eight in the Wallander series (which, personally, I hope Mankell never stops writing),
It's a year after the events of the previous book (One Step Behind), and the story opens with the death of a computer consultant just after making a withdrawal from his ATM. As the team begins its investigation into his death, two young girls in a taxi beat and stab the driver to death. The girls are arrested, and claim they killed the driver for the money, which as it turns out, wasn't ...more
It's a year after the events of the previous book (One Step Behind), and the story opens with the death of a computer consultant just after making a withdrawal from his ATM. As the team begins its investigation into his death, two young girls in a taxi beat and stab the driver to death. The girls are arrested, and claim they killed the driver for the money, which as it turns out, wasn't ...more
This is the last novel featuring Kurt Wallander as the main character. Mankell has written another book but with Linda Wallander as the lead character. In this last novel, we follow Wallander has he battles a group determined to bring new order to the world through chaos. Homicidal teenagers, back stabbing coworker, all the while battling his own loneliness and despair. Again a very tight plot where the moods and emotional health of the character are what makes you read along.
Gripping, well-plotted, smart and gloomy. This is my first Wallander and, although I will read the others, that last adjective means I wouldn’t want to line up a number of these books back to back. I think that wouldn’t be good for one’s mental well-being.
Two seemingly unconnected crimes have far reaching consequences and things get more confusing as the bodies pile up. For the most part this is a compulsive thriller that keeps the reader constantly on edge, but as the plot moves for...more
Two seemingly unconnected crimes have far reaching consequences and things get more confusing as the bodies pile up. For the most part this is a compulsive thriller that keeps the reader constantly on edge, but as the plot moves for...more
It's been a while since I read a Wallander, though I've read the start of the series that features Wallander's daughter, Linda. This was my first Wallander as an audio book, and the first thing javaczuk and I noticed was that we've been saying the name wrong -- we got the initial sound right, but it was more a matter of putting the accent on the wrong syllable. But, I'm teachable, if nothing else, and I now say it correctly (or at least as the audio book did) 90% of the time.
Once ag...more
Once ag...more
Het is een stevig boek. 601 bladzijden maar liefst. Toch had ik het in een mum van tijd uit. Het leest lekker weg, snelle dialogen, een spannend verhaal, een actueel thema en het wordt de lezer niet te gemakkelijk gemaakt. Als lezer ben je echt een eind op weg in de 600 bladzijden voor je een begin van een idee krijgt hoe de vork in de steel zou kunnen zitten.
Onderscheidend voor Mankell vind ik de aandacht die hij aan de persoon Wallander geeft. Hij is niet alleen de inspecteur die een...more
Onderscheidend voor Mankell vind ik de aandacht die hij aan de persoon Wallander geeft. Hij is niet alleen de inspecteur die een...more
The only reason I gave this book a three star is because I made the mistake of listening to it on audiobooks rather than just reading it. The vocal interpreter in my opinion was so distracting I could barely keep the plot in my mind. His attempts at Swedish accent were exaggerated and sometimes pathetically funny. Henning Mankell deserves a much better interpretation - the Troubled Man vocalization seems far better from what I have heard.
That said the same excellent characterization...more
That said the same excellent characterization...more
After two teenage girls murder a taxi driver with a hammer and a knife (who said Sweden wasn't violent?) and a man falls dead in front of an ATM machine, Wallender discovers that both events are intertwined with a worldwide conspiracy to bring the economic world down to a halt.
Although the story is somewhat weak, predictable and outdate, Mankell's writing is always quite entertaining. His characters are very well defined and I specially like his main character, his bitterness and pers...more
Although the story is somewhat weak, predictable and outdate, Mankell's writing is always quite entertaining. His characters are very well defined and I specially like his main character, his bitterness and pers...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Gripping, solid, lengthy mystery that made its main character -- police inspector Kurt Wallander -- the main focus of the story. Wallander's faults and flaws not only make the mystery what it is, they provide the shape and voice to the story. I wanted to know what would happen at the end not only because it was a strange and compelling mystery, but also because I wanted to know what would happen to Kurt Wallander, and that's a great testament to creating a detective.
I jumped into thi...more
I jumped into thi...more
C'est l'automne à Ystad et la nuit sur la Scanie : une jeune fille a été jetée sur les câbles d'un transformateur et un cadavre a été volé à la morgue. Dans le bureau du macchabée, un ordinateur équipé de codes défensifs inviolables semble receler quelques mystères. Un jeune hacker pénètre dans l'ordinateur : attention, l'ennemi invisible a le don d'ubiquité et menace les centres financiers de la planète. Ça sent le scandale médiatique, les magnats préparent leur parachute doré et l'inspecteur W...more
I am a Wallander fan, and finding that returning to the books after watching the superb Swedish TV series with Krister Hendriksen as Wallander, I'm actually enjoying them more (which just goes to show how good the series is).
Firewall is rather fascinating, as it was written in the 90s, with a theme of computer security and hacking. It prefigures some of the paranoia of the Larsson series (but only some). Dealing with this theme well over ten years ago gives this a slight air almost...more
Firewall is rather fascinating, as it was written in the 90s, with a theme of computer security and hacking. It prefigures some of the paranoia of the Larsson series (but only some). Dealing with this theme well over ten years ago gives this a slight air almost...more
Another finely woven, taughtly drawn thriller from Mankell. Mystery and suspense again do not fail to entertain, and Wallander becomes more morose, yet more likeable as he enters his 50's.
These novels are so much polar opposites of current US-based crime dramas dripping with technical details - here the human element is the sine qua non. Even though this novel ponders the questions of of vulnerability to technology and how this might affect society and crime, here the computers themselves ...more
These novels are so much polar opposites of current US-based crime dramas dripping with technical details - here the human element is the sine qua non. Even though this novel ponders the questions of of vulnerability to technology and how this might affect society and crime, here the computers themselves ...more
Exciting. The only complaint I have is that, like a few other authors I've noticed recently, there were too many characters whose names begin with the same letter; in this particular case it was H: Hokberg, Hogstrom, Hoglund, Holgersson (notice that they all start with "HO"), and Hansson. I didn't have too much trouble telling them apart, but it makes me wonder why an author would do this-is it to make the reader slow down? I can't believe it's unintentional, since authors just have a...more
Mankell and I continue our reader to writer/writer to reader virtual dialogue. I was appreciative that Mankell had made his villain more creditable in the seventh of the Kurt Wallander books. In the eighth, not only is the villain believable, Mankell returns to the type of global theme that made 'The Dogs of Riga' and 'The White Lioness' my two favorites of the series. Now I'll have three favorites, with 'Firewall' taking place in part in Luanda, Angola. It's sad to realize that I'm coming t...more
À, định viết review cho cuốn này ngay sau khi đọc xong nhưng lại quên mất. Tựu trung thì cảm giác sau khi gấp sách lại là hụt hẫng.
Mở đầu tốt, mạch truyện tốt, các tình tiết lần lượt được hé mở từ từ bằng một cách viết khá ổn. Nhưng đùng, cái kết làm hỏng tất cả. Giống như là tác giả viết rất hăng, rất sung sức, sau đó dần dần mệt mỏi nên tốt nhất là tìm cách kết thúc. Một cái kết rất vụng về, không thỏa đáng, khiến cho cuốn sách chỉ dừng lại ở mức trung bình.
Tôi nghĩ nh...more
Mở đầu tốt, mạch truyện tốt, các tình tiết lần lượt được hé mở từ từ bằng một cách viết khá ổn. Nhưng đùng, cái kết làm hỏng tất cả. Giống như là tác giả viết rất hăng, rất sung sức, sau đó dần dần mệt mỏi nên tốt nhất là tìm cách kết thúc. Một cái kết rất vụng về, không thỏa đáng, khiến cho cuốn sách chỉ dừng lại ở mức trung bình.
Tôi nghĩ nh...more
The title gives an indication of the content. Due to his unexpected death, a man conspiring with others to bring down the global financial system comes to the attention of the police. They find a computer at one of his two addresses but Wallander’s sidekick, Martinsson, who is well up on computing, soon realises the firewall on this one is beyond him. At his suggestion, a youthful hacker, Modin, is brought in to help, and Modin gradually manages to penetrate the system and shed some light on wha...more
Reading this is one part of my three pronged attack to understand the current wave of Swedish crime fiction!
The sad truth is that's not entirely untrue. I am interested in the "scene" around Steig, I like mysteries and detective stories, and things that are slightly off the beaten path, though this, admittedly, isn't far off it.
It's an interesting book, though not a totally satisfying read; I think Mankell is raising the stakes of the procedural by including every ...more
The sad truth is that's not entirely untrue. I am interested in the "scene" around Steig, I like mysteries and detective stories, and things that are slightly off the beaten path, though this, admittedly, isn't far off it.
It's an interesting book, though not a totally satisfying read; I think Mankell is raising the stakes of the procedural by including every ...more
Like another recent book, I came to Henning Mankell's Firewall after having seen a film version of it. I can't recall this BBC production on Masterpiece Mystery too clearly, so the book still felt fresh to me. And, I'm sure it was adapted for filming, so the two versions would be somewhat divergent.
Overall, I liked the book. It was a fast read after the first few chapters, which felt a little too heavy on exposition. I was entertained and it was worth my time to read it. I'm gla...more
Overall, I liked the book. It was a fast read after the first few chapters, which felt a little too heavy on exposition. I was entertained and it was worth my time to read it. I'm gla...more
Henning Mankell has never come closer to the territory of his illustrious predecessors Sjöwall & Wahlöö than he does here in this detective story cum critique of Western capitalism. Like their detective Martin Beck, his creation Inspector Wallander is a good but slightly remote figure, not overtly politicised but clearly on the side of the underdog. But while Sjöwall & Wahlöö never hid the fact that the Martin Beck series was aimed at promoting a Socialist worldview, Mankell is a little more cir...more
Not the best Mankell I've read but certainly a good one.
The story starts with an accidental death and eventually involves four or five murders and an international cyber-space conspiracy.
As with all of Mankell's work, as much time is spent being exposed to Kurt Wallander's internal world as is spent on his detective work. The man is often tortured by self-doubt and loneliness but somehow muddles through to solving the crimes.
The plot here is very drawn out an...more
The story starts with an accidental death and eventually involves four or five murders and an international cyber-space conspiracy.
As with all of Mankell's work, as much time is spent being exposed to Kurt Wallander's internal world as is spent on his detective work. The man is often tortured by self-doubt and loneliness but somehow muddles through to solving the crimes.
The plot here is very drawn out an...more
Kurt Wallander - He works tirelessly, eats badly and drinks the nights away in a lonely, neglected flat. Still, he tackles some pretty incredible cases --
Here are the titles in the series (with a few extras) -
Faceless Killers
Dogs Of Riga
White Lioness
The Man Who Smiled
Sidetracked
The Fifth Woman
One Step Behind
Firewall
Return Of The Dancing Master (a Stefan Lindman mystery)
Before The Frost (actually a “Linda Wallander” my...more
Here are the titles in the series (with a few extras) -
Faceless Killers
Dogs Of Riga
White Lioness
The Man Who Smiled
Sidetracked
The Fifth Woman
One Step Behind
Firewall
Return Of The Dancing Master (a Stefan Lindman mystery)
Before The Frost (actually a “Linda Wallander” my...more
Kurt Wallander komt tegenover een nieuw soort criminaliteit te staan: computermisdaad op internationale schaal. De blinde muur begint met een dode man bij een bankautomaat en de moord op een taxichauffeur. Een verband tussen deze twee sterfgevallen lijkt er niet te zijn, maar tijdens het onderzoek ontstaat het idee dat de sleutel te vinden is in geheime informatie die zich in de computer van een ITC-consulent bevindt. Wallander schakelt daarom een hacker in om de informatie te ontgrendelen.
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Henning Mankell is an internationally known Swedish crime writer, children's author and playwright. He is best known for his literary character Kurt Wallander.
Mankell splits his time between Sweden and Mozambique. He is married to Eva Bergman, Swedish director and daughter of Ingmar Bergman.
Series:
* Kurt Wallander
*Linda Wallander
*Sofia
*Joel Gustaf...more
More about Henning Mankell...
Mankell splits his time between Sweden and Mozambique. He is married to Eva Bergman, Swedish director and daughter of Ingmar Bergman.
Series:
* Kurt Wallander
*Linda Wallander
*Sofia
*Joel Gustaf...more
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