What do you think?
Rate this book
Kurt Wallander #3
De witte leeuwin
Als makelaar Louise Åkerblom verdwijnt, weet de Zweedse inspecteur Kurt Wallander nog niet dat hij voor de ingewikkeldste opgave uit zijn loopbaan staat.
De vrouw blijkt vermoord te zijn. Op de plaats van de misdaad wordt een vinger gevonden die aan iemand met een donkere huidskleur toebehoort. Alles wijst op een executie. Intussen beraamt een groep fanatieke Zuid-Afrikaanse 'Boeren' een aanslag op een vooraanstaand politicus. Kurt Wallander vermoedt een verband tussen de verdwijning in Zweden en de samenzwering in Zuid-Afrika.
De vrouw blijkt vermoord te zijn. Op de plaats van de misdaad wordt een vinger gevonden die aan iemand met een donkere huidskleur toebehoort. Alles wijst op een executie. Intussen beraamt een groep fanatieke Zuid-Afrikaanse 'Boeren' een aanslag op een vooraanstaand politicus. Kurt Wallander vermoedt een verband tussen de verdwijning in Zweden en de samenzwering in Zuid-Afrika.
544 pages
First published January 1, 1993
1091 people are currently reading
6647 people want to read
About the author
Henning Mankell
272 books3,830 followersHenning Mankell was an internationally known Swedish crime writer, children's author and playwright. He was best known for his literary character Kurt Wallander.
Mankell split his time between Sweden and Mozambique. He was married to Eva Bergman, Swedish director and daughter of Ingmar Bergman.
Mankell split his time between Sweden and Mozambique. He was married to Eva Bergman, Swedish director and daughter of Ingmar Bergman.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,438 reviews
June 11, 2023
Kurt Wallander book 3: My first Wallander, and not realising that this would be the start of my affection for this series despite the following one sentence review I gave this, when I read it: 'Kurt Wallander investigates the random killing of a 'perfect' wife; a killing that is which is just the start of a plot to kill a non-Swedish world leader! A good read, but very close to being over the top in regards to the targeted world leader. So initially a Two Star 5 out of 12, upgraded to 7 out of 12, Three Stars after a reread just over a year later in 2010.
2010 and 2009 read
2010 and 2009 read
July 14, 2024
L’UOMO INQUIETO
L’ispettore Kurt Wallander è il protagonista di questa serie di romanzi firmata da Henning Mankell, di cui questa è la terza storia.
Non so bene perché ho cominciato da questa, se girava per casa o se avevo letto che era il migliore.
Fatto sta che io e Mankell ci siamo conosciuti con questo romanzo e mai più rincontrati.
Il perché è presto detto: l’ho trovato sufficiente, diligente, non brillante, abbastanza standard, non meritevole d’approfondimento, di insistere.
Non so bene come quando e perché, ma credo che anche nella letteratura di genere thriller poliziesco sia successo quello che è successo con la settima arte: presumo sia un mix di gusto e di sviluppo tecnico che consente cose che prima erano difficili o impossibili, basta vedere come viene composta un’inquadratura da una ventina d’anni a questa parte per sentire se in un film o serie tv il tempo ha fatto danni.
Altrettanto mi pare sia successo con la letteratura poliziesca, thriller. A me verrebbe da pensare che dopo la trilogia Millennium non si può più scrivere come si faceva prima.
Ora, il romanzo di Mankell anticipa il primo scritto da Stieg Larsson di una dozzina d’anni (1993 questo, 2005 Uomini che odiano le donne). Elemento che giustificherebbe il suo essere così solidamente nel solco antico, senza scossoni.
Ma evidentemente il mio gusto è cambiato e ormai mal si adatta anche a un romanzo che non è certo un brutto poliziesco, tutt’altro. È solo, come ho detto, un po’ vecchiotto nello stile, nella struttura, nello svolgimento, nella dinamica.
Avrei dovuto leggerlo quando è uscito, lo avrei trovato attuale e interessante. Perché un aspetto centrale del caso che deve risolvere l’ispettore svedese è strettamente legato alla storia del Sudafrica, all’apartheid, alla fine del “regno” dei bianchi, all’African National Congress che sta per prendere il potere, Mandela viene rilasciato, lascia la prigione dove l’hanno tenuto per ventisette anni, e quattro anni dopo diventa il primo presidente nero del Sudafrica. E sarà l’unico a dire qualcosa di intelligente sul genocidio dei tutsi.
Dopo un prologo ambientato in Sudafrica nel 1918, si salta in Svezia al 1992, per poi tornare in Sudafrica. Wallander indaga su un omicidio: è stato ritrovato il corpo di una donna, un’agente immobiliare di confessione metodista, una donna normale, moglie e madre di famiglia, è stata uccisa e gettata nel fondo di un pozzo.
Ma c’è anche un incendio dal quale emerge un dito nero: nero non perché bruciato, ma perché appartiene a persona dalla pelle nera.
E certo non poteva mancare un ex agente del KGB, che ci sta sempre bene.
Come si conviene, il poliziotto è tormentato, in questo caso malinconico, inquieto come dice anche il titolo dell’undicesimo romanzo della serie (di dodici, per ora). È solo, ma con una figlia. L’indagine che deve risolvere si snoda in modo ‘classico’: missing person, indagini su eventuali precedenti e passato, ritrovamento, prime ipotesi…
Mankell per renderla più ghiotta abbina una situazione politica internazionale, un evento che entrerà nella storia. Solo che dalla Svezia al Sudafrica sembra esserci qualcosa di tirato per i capelli, come si suole dire. Qualcosa di un po’ artefatto.
Non ho visto il film svedese. Mi è bastato vedere il pastrocchio che hanno combinato con Millennium.
Però ho visto alcuni episodi della serie TV con Kenneth Branagh, qui al suo meglio, finalmente nel ruolo giusto, in abiti che gli vanno a pennello: bravo, giusto, la serie con bella fotografia e giusta intensità.
Ma anche questa, derivando dai romanzi di Mankell, dopo un po’ si rivela troppo classica, con casi da risolvere un po’ sciapi, senza brio.
L’ispettore Kurt Wallander è il protagonista di questa serie di romanzi firmata da Henning Mankell, di cui questa è la terza storia.
Non so bene perché ho cominciato da questa, se girava per casa o se avevo letto che era il migliore.
Fatto sta che io e Mankell ci siamo conosciuti con questo romanzo e mai più rincontrati.
Il perché è presto detto: l’ho trovato sufficiente, diligente, non brillante, abbastanza standard, non meritevole d’approfondimento, di insistere.
Non so bene come quando e perché, ma credo che anche nella letteratura di genere thriller poliziesco sia successo quello che è successo con la settima arte: presumo sia un mix di gusto e di sviluppo tecnico che consente cose che prima erano difficili o impossibili, basta vedere come viene composta un’inquadratura da una ventina d’anni a questa parte per sentire se in un film o serie tv il tempo ha fatto danni.
Altrettanto mi pare sia successo con la letteratura poliziesca, thriller. A me verrebbe da pensare che dopo la trilogia Millennium non si può più scrivere come si faceva prima.
Ora, il romanzo di Mankell anticipa il primo scritto da Stieg Larsson di una dozzina d’anni (1993 questo, 2005 Uomini che odiano le donne). Elemento che giustificherebbe il suo essere così solidamente nel solco antico, senza scossoni.
Ma evidentemente il mio gusto è cambiato e ormai mal si adatta anche a un romanzo che non è certo un brutto poliziesco, tutt’altro. È solo, come ho detto, un po’ vecchiotto nello stile, nella struttura, nello svolgimento, nella dinamica.
Avrei dovuto leggerlo quando è uscito, lo avrei trovato attuale e interessante. Perché un aspetto centrale del caso che deve risolvere l’ispettore svedese è strettamente legato alla storia del Sudafrica, all’apartheid, alla fine del “regno” dei bianchi, all’African National Congress che sta per prendere il potere, Mandela viene rilasciato, lascia la prigione dove l’hanno tenuto per ventisette anni, e quattro anni dopo diventa il primo presidente nero del Sudafrica. E sarà l’unico a dire qualcosa di intelligente sul genocidio dei tutsi.
Dopo un prologo ambientato in Sudafrica nel 1918, si salta in Svezia al 1992, per poi tornare in Sudafrica. Wallander indaga su un omicidio: è stato ritrovato il corpo di una donna, un’agente immobiliare di confessione metodista, una donna normale, moglie e madre di famiglia, è stata uccisa e gettata nel fondo di un pozzo.
Ma c’è anche un incendio dal quale emerge un dito nero: nero non perché bruciato, ma perché appartiene a persona dalla pelle nera.
E certo non poteva mancare un ex agente del KGB, che ci sta sempre bene.
Come si conviene, il poliziotto è tormentato, in questo caso malinconico, inquieto come dice anche il titolo dell’undicesimo romanzo della serie (di dodici, per ora). È solo, ma con una figlia. L’indagine che deve risolvere si snoda in modo ‘classico’: missing person, indagini su eventuali precedenti e passato, ritrovamento, prime ipotesi…
Mankell per renderla più ghiotta abbina una situazione politica internazionale, un evento che entrerà nella storia. Solo che dalla Svezia al Sudafrica sembra esserci qualcosa di tirato per i capelli, come si suole dire. Qualcosa di un po’ artefatto.
Non ho visto il film svedese. Mi è bastato vedere il pastrocchio che hanno combinato con Millennium.
Però ho visto alcuni episodi della serie TV con Kenneth Branagh, qui al suo meglio, finalmente nel ruolo giusto, in abiti che gli vanno a pennello: bravo, giusto, la serie con bella fotografia e giusta intensità.
Ma anche questa, derivando dai romanzi di Mankell, dopo un po’ si rivela troppo classica, con casi da risolvere un po’ sciapi, senza brio.
November 4, 2018
”A child should grow, grow bigger; but in my country a black child has to learn how to grow smaller and smaller. I saw my parents succumb to their own invisibility, their own accumulated bitterness. I was an obedient child and learned to be a nobody among nobodies. Apartheid was my real father. I learned what no one should need to learn. To live with falsehood, contempt, a lie elevated to the only truth in my country. A lie enforced by police and laws, but above all by a flood of white water, a torrent of words about the natural differences between white and black, the superiority of white civilization.”
Kenneth Branagh is Wallander/
When a real estate agent turns up missing, Kurt Wallander of the Ystad Swedish police catches the case along with most of the department. They have a general idea of where she went missing, but they have few clues as to what has caused her disappearance. She and her husband are very religious, and Wallander finds himself thinking ”what it feels like to believe in God.”
As we learn more about Wallander, we realize there are good reasons why he is estranged from his ex-wife, his daughter, and his father. We also start to understand the frustrations that the other cops have working with him. He is bloody brilliant most of the time between those other moments of complete befuddlement. He has a single minded purpose in tracking down a missing woman, a killer, or solving a puzzle of a crime. If I were missing, I’d want Kurt Wallander trying to find me. He devotes himself so exclusively to a case that he has little time for those around him, or eating, or sleeping. He makes these leaps in logic that baffle his fellow police officers, but what they don’t realize is that while they are...having a life...Wallander is still ticking over the aspects of the case.
Wallander makes a breakthrough in the case, and this is one of those moments when time is of the essence, and he takes the day off to be with his daughter. He is trying to do the right thing, attempting to completely divorce himself from the case to pay attention to his daughter, but it turns into a missed opportunity. I, too, was frustrated with Wallander at this point.
They find the severed finger of a black man at the scene where they believe the real estate agent went missing. This turns out to be a digit that once belonged to Victor Mabatha of South Africa. This book came out in 1993 in Sweden and 1998 in an English translation, so apartheid was still fresh in everyone’s mind. During the course of the plot, Wallander and Mabatha intersect, and Victor gives this impassioned explanation for why he is the way he is, which is the quote I chose to lead this review with.
So a missing person case becomes a nonsensical international case somehow involving a planned assassination in South Africa. Why are these people in Sweden? Henning Mankill adds some additional spice to the plot with a demented, immoral Russian named Konovalenko. He runs the sole of his boot down the face of a person he just killed to close their eyes. Somehow that made me shudder more than the actual killing of the person. Maybe because we all deserve some semblance of reverence in death.
I would be a very considerate serial killer.
I found it interesting that Mankill takes us from the mind of Wallander to the political musings of several politicians in South Africa. We start to discover the extent of the conspiracy. The question is, can Wallander put the pieces together in time to obstruct a world tragedy?
That looks like the face of a man who put two and two together and got sixteen.
I hope most of you have had the chance to watch the spot on performance by Kenneth Branagh in the 12 episode BBC TV series. They scrambled the order of the books, which required some changes to the backstory, but not enough to bother me. I have a set of the Wallander books and plan to read them all. I set them aside to watch the TV series, which does break a half a dozen Keeten reading rules, but certainly seeing the TV episode of this book did not detract from my reading enjoyment. A story well told can be experienced many times with new insights with each retelling.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Kenneth Branagh is Wallander/
When a real estate agent turns up missing, Kurt Wallander of the Ystad Swedish police catches the case along with most of the department. They have a general idea of where she went missing, but they have few clues as to what has caused her disappearance. She and her husband are very religious, and Wallander finds himself thinking ”what it feels like to believe in God.”
As we learn more about Wallander, we realize there are good reasons why he is estranged from his ex-wife, his daughter, and his father. We also start to understand the frustrations that the other cops have working with him. He is bloody brilliant most of the time between those other moments of complete befuddlement. He has a single minded purpose in tracking down a missing woman, a killer, or solving a puzzle of a crime. If I were missing, I’d want Kurt Wallander trying to find me. He devotes himself so exclusively to a case that he has little time for those around him, or eating, or sleeping. He makes these leaps in logic that baffle his fellow police officers, but what they don’t realize is that while they are...having a life...Wallander is still ticking over the aspects of the case.
Wallander makes a breakthrough in the case, and this is one of those moments when time is of the essence, and he takes the day off to be with his daughter. He is trying to do the right thing, attempting to completely divorce himself from the case to pay attention to his daughter, but it turns into a missed opportunity. I, too, was frustrated with Wallander at this point.
They find the severed finger of a black man at the scene where they believe the real estate agent went missing. This turns out to be a digit that once belonged to Victor Mabatha of South Africa. This book came out in 1993 in Sweden and 1998 in an English translation, so apartheid was still fresh in everyone’s mind. During the course of the plot, Wallander and Mabatha intersect, and Victor gives this impassioned explanation for why he is the way he is, which is the quote I chose to lead this review with.
So a missing person case becomes a nonsensical international case somehow involving a planned assassination in South Africa. Why are these people in Sweden? Henning Mankill adds some additional spice to the plot with a demented, immoral Russian named Konovalenko. He runs the sole of his boot down the face of a person he just killed to close their eyes. Somehow that made me shudder more than the actual killing of the person. Maybe because we all deserve some semblance of reverence in death.
I would be a very considerate serial killer.
I found it interesting that Mankill takes us from the mind of Wallander to the political musings of several politicians in South Africa. We start to discover the extent of the conspiracy. The question is, can Wallander put the pieces together in time to obstruct a world tragedy?
That looks like the face of a man who put two and two together and got sixteen.
I hope most of you have had the chance to watch the spot on performance by Kenneth Branagh in the 12 episode BBC TV series. They scrambled the order of the books, which required some changes to the backstory, but not enough to bother me. I have a set of the Wallander books and plan to read them all. I set them aside to watch the TV series, which does break a half a dozen Keeten reading rules, but certainly seeing the TV episode of this book did not detract from my reading enjoyment. A story well told can be experienced many times with new insights with each retelling.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
July 4, 2025
Published in 1993, THE WHITE LIONESS is author Mankell’s third novel in the Kurt Wallander series.
Wallander is investigating the disappearance of a woman who was last known to be calling on a possible real estate client. She has been missing for 3 days and her husband and 2 young children are worried. Where could she be?!
As the investigation begins, ribbons of information reveal that the disappearance involves head-scratching clues tied to Russia and South Africa. How is this remotely possible? Will the missing real estate agent be found?
A solid story, I wanted to rate this more than 3 stars, but I just couldn’t. It just seemed bloated in some parts that made it slow to read.
Wallander is investigating the disappearance of a woman who was last known to be calling on a possible real estate client. She has been missing for 3 days and her husband and 2 young children are worried. Where could she be?!
As the investigation begins, ribbons of information reveal that the disappearance involves head-scratching clues tied to Russia and South Africa. How is this remotely possible? Will the missing real estate agent be found?
A solid story, I wanted to rate this more than 3 stars, but I just couldn’t. It just seemed bloated in some parts that made it slow to read.
July 13, 2024
Thrilling!
A missing woman leads to a brutal murder, which leads to a conspiracy of murder, all the way to apartheid South Africa.
Wallander is racing the clock, as he focuses on cleaning up the crime. But he is running out of time.
Five stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A missing woman leads to a brutal murder, which leads to a conspiracy of murder, all the way to apartheid South Africa.
Wallander is racing the clock, as he focuses on cleaning up the crime. But he is running out of time.
Five stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
September 20, 2007
I'm only reviewing this one book, but I've read the entire detective series by Henning Mankell, and I am a huge fan. I first became aware of him after returning from a trip to Sweden in 2004, and then discovered he has a cult following in Europe and is beginning to have one in the U.S. He has written all kinds of novels, but I've focused on his mystery series featuring Swedish police officer Kurt Wallander. The Wallander stories are good mysteries in their own right, but what commends the books is Wallander's struggles to live life as a middle-aged detective whose personal life is always under strain. His wife has left him, his daughter has a spotty relationship with him, he finds another woman in his life but isn't able to commit, he constantly thinks about getting out of the police force. It's that human-ness, and what I think of as a Swedish pessimism, that makes this series so intoxicating. Also, because Mankell the author lives about half of every year in Mozambique, several of his plots also have fascinating explorations of problems in Africa. I highly recommend this series.
July 27, 2016
This, the third entry in Henning Mankell's series featuring Swedish Inspector Kurt Wallander, appeared in 1993, and is a very ambitious effort--in the end, perhaps overly so. The story starts simply enough with the murder of a real estate agent who finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it quickly spins into a major international conspiracy involving a plot by die-hard South African whites to assassinate Nelson Mandela, shortly after he was released from prison.
The plotters have recruited a black assassin to murder Mandela, hoping to spark a race war that will enable the whites to continue to control the country. They've recruited a former KGB agent to train the assassin and have concluded for some reason that the training would best be done secretly in Sweden, which is how Wallander's murder investigation becomes mixed up with the conspiracy.
The story is told from several different points of view and jumps back and forth from Sweden to South Africa. It's quite a long and complicated book with a fairly large cast of characters. In many ways it's a very intriguing story, somewhat along the lines of The Day of the Jackal. But it drags on a bit too long, and it's hard for Mankell to maintain the suspense throughout the book.
I'm rating this three stars rather than four because over the course of the story, Kurt Wallander occasionally takes actions that make no sense. The maverick cop who follows his own trail and sometimes takes shortcuts while ignoring the orders of his superiors is a staple of crime fiction, and most of us love these characters, at least as long as what they are doing seems logical. In these case though, on at least a couple of occasions, Wallander does things that seem totally illogical and which leave the reader, as well as his colleagues, wondering if he might be having some sort of mental breakdown.
Still, in all, I enjoyed the story and I'm looking forward to the next installment.
The plotters have recruited a black assassin to murder Mandela, hoping to spark a race war that will enable the whites to continue to control the country. They've recruited a former KGB agent to train the assassin and have concluded for some reason that the training would best be done secretly in Sweden, which is how Wallander's murder investigation becomes mixed up with the conspiracy.
The story is told from several different points of view and jumps back and forth from Sweden to South Africa. It's quite a long and complicated book with a fairly large cast of characters. In many ways it's a very intriguing story, somewhat along the lines of The Day of the Jackal. But it drags on a bit too long, and it's hard for Mankell to maintain the suspense throughout the book.
I'm rating this three stars rather than four because over the course of the story, Kurt Wallander occasionally takes actions that make no sense. The maverick cop who follows his own trail and sometimes takes shortcuts while ignoring the orders of his superiors is a staple of crime fiction, and most of us love these characters, at least as long as what they are doing seems logical. In these case though, on at least a couple of occasions, Wallander does things that seem totally illogical and which leave the reader, as well as his colleagues, wondering if he might be having some sort of mental breakdown.
Still, in all, I enjoyed the story and I'm looking forward to the next installment.
December 22, 2025
4 stars
short review for busy readers:
Honestly, one of the best Wallanders. And honestly, it would have been an excellent political thriller without the need for Wallander to appear at all.
in detail:
There is enough explosive action, drama and phenomenal setting detail with the South African political tinderbox and attempted assassination of Nelson Mandela without the need to strain the story to include some country Swedish cops.
But then, I'm a big fan of cop-less crime novels and not a huge fan of Wallander, so I would say that.
My only critique of this is that the writing gets far too granular, describing the action and conversations in far too much detail which makes the novel feel overly long. We don't need to accompany characters out in the yard when they take a leak, do we? Watch them butter toast? Put on their socks?
For fans of that style, probably just right.
Read in the Swedish original for the Foreign Language Reading Challenge and Long Books Challenge 2025.
short review for busy readers:
Honestly, one of the best Wallanders. And honestly, it would have been an excellent political thriller without the need for Wallander to appear at all.
in detail:
There is enough explosive action, drama and phenomenal setting detail with the South African political tinderbox and attempted assassination of Nelson Mandela without the need to strain the story to include some country Swedish cops.
But then, I'm a big fan of cop-less crime novels and not a huge fan of Wallander, so I would say that.
My only critique of this is that the writing gets far too granular, describing the action and conversations in far too much detail which makes the novel feel overly long. We don't need to accompany characters out in the yard when they take a leak, do we? Watch them butter toast? Put on their socks?
For fans of that style, probably just right.
Read in the Swedish original for the Foreign Language Reading Challenge and Long Books Challenge 2025.
August 27, 2009
Henning, dude, if you want to write a book about how it sucks to live in racist South Africa, I'm all for it. But I picked up this book because it was a KURT WALLANDER mystery. Wallander--the SWEDISH policeman, for christsakes...is he really going to foil a plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela? I want to read about SWEDISH police doing SWEDISH things like solving murders in SKANE, drinking coffee and eating sandwiches. If I wanted to read the Ladies Detective series, I would have joined a book club...
April 25, 2017
Kurt Wallander and South Africa.
One of Sweden’s most recognized fiction crime fighters gets caught up in international espionage in this 1993 post cold war thriller that has half of it’s action involving the end of Apartheid in South Africa as the reigning Boers free Nelson Mandela and all hell breaks lose.
What keeps this moving and what holds it together is author Henning Mankell’s excellent writing (and to be fair Laurie Thompson’s translation) and his ability to convey a subtle but unsettling sense of disquietude in the Swedish coast town of Ystad.
What slows this down is Mankell’s overly ambitious design. In a medium sized city (Ystad is around 30k population) an assassination attempt is uncovered following a murder. This connection to South Africa is both thrilling and stretched out – leading this reader to believe that Mankell uses his Wallander pulpit as a vehicle to talk about South Africa. Which is fine, it just spreads thin what would otherwise be a pretty good whodunit.
This reminded me of Jo Nesbo’s 2000 publication The Redbreast of his Norwegian detective Harry Hole in the international intrigue, but unfortunately also Nesbo’s 2002 follow up Nemesis in that both writer’s felt the compulsion to throw everything but the kitchen sink in to an already busy mix.
This also made me wonder about Ystad. The map shows this as extreme southernmost Sweden and of medium size. I looked up some comparable United States and Tennessee towns of the same size to give me an idea about the kind of place Mankell describes. These are some very modest places. Towns like Oak Park Michegan, Lebanon Tennessee and Monterey California. What is Mankell’s inspiration for such a setting?
And what about Wallander? Hasn’t the whole dark and wounded, brooding and philosophical, sloppy outside of a razor mind kitsch been done before? Well, sure, but Mankell does it very well in the Scandinavian crime fiction.
So, not his best but still very good and worth another visit to sunny Ystad.
One of Sweden’s most recognized fiction crime fighters gets caught up in international espionage in this 1993 post cold war thriller that has half of it’s action involving the end of Apartheid in South Africa as the reigning Boers free Nelson Mandela and all hell breaks lose.
What keeps this moving and what holds it together is author Henning Mankell’s excellent writing (and to be fair Laurie Thompson’s translation) and his ability to convey a subtle but unsettling sense of disquietude in the Swedish coast town of Ystad.
What slows this down is Mankell’s overly ambitious design. In a medium sized city (Ystad is around 30k population) an assassination attempt is uncovered following a murder. This connection to South Africa is both thrilling and stretched out – leading this reader to believe that Mankell uses his Wallander pulpit as a vehicle to talk about South Africa. Which is fine, it just spreads thin what would otherwise be a pretty good whodunit.
This reminded me of Jo Nesbo’s 2000 publication The Redbreast of his Norwegian detective Harry Hole in the international intrigue, but unfortunately also Nesbo’s 2002 follow up Nemesis in that both writer’s felt the compulsion to throw everything but the kitchen sink in to an already busy mix.
This also made me wonder about Ystad. The map shows this as extreme southernmost Sweden and of medium size. I looked up some comparable United States and Tennessee towns of the same size to give me an idea about the kind of place Mankell describes. These are some very modest places. Towns like Oak Park Michegan, Lebanon Tennessee and Monterey California. What is Mankell’s inspiration for such a setting?
And what about Wallander? Hasn’t the whole dark and wounded, brooding and philosophical, sloppy outside of a razor mind kitsch been done before? Well, sure, but Mankell does it very well in the Scandinavian crime fiction.
So, not his best but still very good and worth another visit to sunny Ystad.
May 11, 2025
Tended to linger whenever I wanted to rush.
November 14, 2020
This is the third and by far most ambitious of Henning Mankell’s Wallander series. I’ll call it 3.75, some points in favor because of the ambition, and some points against because of the ambitihon, but on the whole I think it is very good. I haven’t read anything about what Mankell was trying to do in this series, but this is how I see it: He is trying to see if his global and social justice interests can merge with te typical tropes of the police procedural/mystery/thriller novel. Serious global issues merge with entertainment.
In the first book, Faceless Killers, we establish that Kurt Wallander is the Everyman sad sack aging detective--wife leaves him, daughter’s estranged from him, he’s drinking more, gaining weight, generally sad and grumpy to fit the isolated small town Swedish landscape where he is a middling detective. Mankell has deep commitments to social justice--immigration, racism, and so one--so he brings these issues to the small town and the small town cop, who initially seems politically disnterested. They/we must wake up to the changing nature of the world, Mankell seems to be saying.
In this third book a woman is brutally slain and this is already head-shakingly disturbing to the small town and even the cops. Who would want to do this?! What is the world coming to? Well, there are two basic threads in this novel, one that connects this seemingly random small town murder with a plot to kill a major political figure in South Africa, in 1992, as Apartheid slowly collapses, with pushback against the ANC from Afrikaaners still in power. Along the way, Wallander’s father and daughter are endangered (somewhat like several of Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole novels), and the family is pulled into the intrigue. But small town cop Wallander has an opportunity to impact world events by doing the right thing. This is the up side of Mankell’s ambition in his detective fiction novel, that he injects real world global politics into a crime fiction, a whodunnit, and it basically works.
There are some much slower parts (the down side of the ambition) than we typically see in crime fiction, as we examine the injustices of Apartheid in South Africa, through quite a bit of talk, though this is not a tale of simple good vs evil, blacks--good and whites--evil; things are more complicated than that. And Wallander is roughly half of this story, as we go back and forth between Sweden and South Africa. There’s a big finish worthy of a thriller, and this works well, with justice coming satisfyingly to several characters. I didn’t really resonate with the central image of the white lioness as somehow symbolic of South Africa, but I thought the work was well done, on the whole.
In the first book, Faceless Killers, we establish that Kurt Wallander is the Everyman sad sack aging detective--wife leaves him, daughter’s estranged from him, he’s drinking more, gaining weight, generally sad and grumpy to fit the isolated small town Swedish landscape where he is a middling detective. Mankell has deep commitments to social justice--immigration, racism, and so one--so he brings these issues to the small town and the small town cop, who initially seems politically disnterested. They/we must wake up to the changing nature of the world, Mankell seems to be saying.
In this third book a woman is brutally slain and this is already head-shakingly disturbing to the small town and even the cops. Who would want to do this?! What is the world coming to? Well, there are two basic threads in this novel, one that connects this seemingly random small town murder with a plot to kill a major political figure in South Africa, in 1992, as Apartheid slowly collapses, with pushback against the ANC from Afrikaaners still in power. Along the way, Wallander’s father and daughter are endangered (somewhat like several of Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole novels), and the family is pulled into the intrigue. But small town cop Wallander has an opportunity to impact world events by doing the right thing. This is the up side of Mankell’s ambition in his detective fiction novel, that he injects real world global politics into a crime fiction, a whodunnit, and it basically works.
There are some much slower parts (the down side of the ambition) than we typically see in crime fiction, as we examine the injustices of Apartheid in South Africa, through quite a bit of talk, though this is not a tale of simple good vs evil, blacks--good and whites--evil; things are more complicated than that. And Wallander is roughly half of this story, as we go back and forth between Sweden and South Africa. There’s a big finish worthy of a thriller, and this works well, with justice coming satisfyingly to several characters. I didn’t really resonate with the central image of the white lioness as somehow symbolic of South Africa, but I thought the work was well done, on the whole.
February 17, 2016
I hesitated a long time before reading the third Wallander story. That's mainly because I knew that this book would be much different than the first two since it is a lot more ambitious. It deals with Mandela... hence with world politics. Uuuughhh... is this really what I want to read in a proper noir/crime novel? Nah... I read the papers for that kinda stuff.
The first two books had many flaws but they were also interesting in a certain way because they mainly focused on the characters and the crime. This story is about Mandela and I think that this territory is way too big and grand to properly deal with when it is put into a crime novel. I obviously get the point, Mankell had good intentions but when I pick up a crime novel I enjoy reading about the most simple characters in their daily surroundings, it is absolutely enough for an exciting story. This book is simply aaaaall ooover the place! There is nooooo character development whatsoever. There were too many plotlines, too many flat characters, the villains were only bad and nearly completely one-dimensional, there were also many plotholes and moments when I wanted to shout "Ooooh pleeeeasseeee... really now?" while rolling my eyes as hard as I could.
I don't want to hate on Mankell because he wanted to do something good and had the right intentions but in my opinion it didn't work out at all. If you want to write a proper book about politics or about Mandela then that's fine.
The first two books had many flaws but they were also interesting in a certain way because they mainly focused on the characters and the crime. This story is about Mandela and I think that this territory is way too big and grand to properly deal with when it is put into a crime novel. I obviously get the point, Mankell had good intentions but when I pick up a crime novel I enjoy reading about the most simple characters in their daily surroundings, it is absolutely enough for an exciting story. This book is simply aaaaall ooover the place! There is nooooo character development whatsoever. There were too many plotlines, too many flat characters, the villains were only bad and nearly completely one-dimensional, there were also many plotholes and moments when I wanted to shout "Ooooh pleeeeasseeee... really now?" while rolling my eyes as hard as I could.
I don't want to hate on Mankell because he wanted to do something good and had the right intentions but in my opinion it didn't work out at all. If you want to write a proper book about politics or about Mandela then that's fine.
August 6, 2023
These are three small stars, as I find it too long - and honestly a bit boring
Read
February 20, 2022رواية " جريمة الذئب الوحيد " للكاتب السويدي " هينينج مانكل " احدى سلسلة المحقق " كيرت فالاندر "...
ماذا لدينا هنا ؟...
امرأة قُتِلت إثر تلقيها رصاصة في رأسها وتم العثور عليها في بئر ، منزل احترق من انفجار مدوي خلّف وراءه اصبع أسود وجهاز لاسلكي وبندقية روسية الصنع...
إذن ليست جريمة تقتصر على البلدة الصغيرة التي تدور بها الأحداث بل سيتبين بأن السويد محطة من محطات مؤامرة خطيرة..
عن آخر عهد الفصل العنصري في جنوب افريقيا في عام ١٩٩٢ ، وتداعيات ذلك فيما يتمثل بما يُحاك من مؤامرة لاغتيال شخصية سياسية هامة وإراقة الدماء وإثارة العنف والفوضى لاندلاع حرب أهلية مُدمرة...
كان ذلك مؤثراً في تجلي صورة الفصل العنصري بما فيها من كراهية ورغبة جامحة للانتقام لدى أصحاب الأرض وذلك لإذدرائهم وإجبارهم على العيش بمذلة بل وإبداء الاعتذار عن وجودهم...
بينما من الطرف الذي يحاول فرض السيطرة تتعثر بحبائل الدسائس..الخيانات..الأكاذيب..والتعطش المروع للدماء....
نقاط ضعف هذا العمل أن أوراق اللعبة مكشوفة بلا استثناء وهذا يعني غياب التشويق لدى القاريء...فالخريطة مرسومة أمامك بلا شفرات غامضة أو إشارات مُبهمة...
كما أن هناك ثغرات في التحقيق تعكس الإهمال والغباء إن جاز التعبير...
سيادة المحقق يفتقد الجرأة والإقتحام ، كان عاطفي حذراً ومُتخبطاً وفقد توازنه عند ذروة الأحداث...
وأخيراً...المحقق كان يحب امرأة يكتب لها خطابات كلما سقط في هوة الإكتئاب ، أجرى معها مرتين اتصالاً هاتفياً فلم اسمع لها صوتاً ولم تنبس بكلمة واحدة ...لماذا ؟
والله لم يكن لتتداعى البنية النصية لو كان لها صوتاً يرفض..يساند...يتهرب...، فقط تثبت وجودها لإنني ظننتها شبحاً وإن كانت كائن بشري فلقد أثارت غضبي من جمودها...🤨
الجميل كانت مشاركة القراءة مع الصديقة الغالية هبة الله ونقاشاتنا الممتعة 💕
ماذا لدينا هنا ؟...
امرأة قُتِلت إثر تلقيها رصاصة في رأسها وتم العثور عليها في بئر ، منزل احترق من انفجار مدوي خلّف وراءه اصبع أسود وجهاز لاسلكي وبندقية روسية الصنع...
إذن ليست جريمة تقتصر على البلدة الصغيرة التي تدور بها الأحداث بل سيتبين بأن السويد محطة من محطات مؤامرة خطيرة..
عن آخر عهد الفصل العنصري في جنوب افريقيا في عام ١٩٩٢ ، وتداعيات ذلك فيما يتمثل بما يُحاك من مؤامرة لاغتيال شخصية سياسية هامة وإراقة الدماء وإثارة العنف والفوضى لاندلاع حرب أهلية مُدمرة...
كان ذلك مؤثراً في تجلي صورة الفصل العنصري بما فيها من كراهية ورغبة جامحة للانتقام لدى أصحاب الأرض وذلك لإذدرائهم وإجبارهم على العيش بمذلة بل وإبداء الاعتذار عن وجودهم...
بينما من الطرف الذي يحاول فرض السيطرة تتعثر بحبائل الدسائس..الخيانات..الأكاذيب..والتعطش المروع للدماء....
نقاط ضعف هذا العمل أن أوراق اللعبة مكشوفة بلا استثناء وهذا يعني غياب التشويق لدى القاريء...فالخريطة مرسومة أمامك بلا شفرات غامضة أو إشارات مُبهمة...
كما أن هناك ثغرات في التحقيق تعكس الإهمال والغباء إن جاز التعبير...
سيادة المحقق يفتقد الجرأة والإقتحام ، كان عاطفي حذراً ومُتخبطاً وفقد توازنه عند ذروة الأحداث...
وأخيراً...المحقق كان يحب امرأة يكتب لها خطابات كلما سقط في هوة الإكتئاب ، أجرى معها مرتين اتصالاً هاتفياً فلم اسمع لها صوتاً ولم تنبس بكلمة واحدة ...لماذا ؟
والله لم يكن لتتداعى البنية النصية لو كان لها صوتاً يرفض..يساند...يتهرب...، فقط تثبت وجودها لإنني ظننتها شبحاً وإن كانت كائن بشري فلقد أثارت غضبي من جمودها...🤨
الجميل كانت مشاركة القراءة مع الصديقة الغالية هبة الله ونقاشاتنا الممتعة 💕
September 4, 2021
Very far fetched. Could a policeman ignore police procedures. The kidnapping, firefight and then keeping Mabasha as a house guest. Its just unbelievable. However, the plot, conspiracy and light linking all together is good. Wallander is at is best in being cowardly and heroic as well as his depression and the unhealthy life style take their toll.
The murder of the real estate agent and the ruthless Konavalenko lead us on a fast paced thriller. I am curious to watch the tv adaptation now. The story is set in 1992 and South Africa is in transition and turmoil. A white brotherhood of Boers plans to create a civil war to enable them to maintain the policies of apartheid. Wallander stumbles on to the conspiracy and it becomes a race to see if an assassination can be stopped.
The murder of the real estate agent and the ruthless Konavalenko lead us on a fast paced thriller. I am curious to watch the tv adaptation now. The story is set in 1992 and South Africa is in transition and turmoil. A white brotherhood of Boers plans to create a civil war to enable them to maintain the policies of apartheid. Wallander stumbles on to the conspiracy and it becomes a race to see if an assassination can be stopped.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 18, 2025
An early Wallender for me. This story switches between Sweden and South Africa. Starts simply with the death of a female Methodist estate agent and moves ‘Day of the Jackal’ like in the training of a South African assassin.
Wallender as usual morose. Nice storyline involving his daughter Linda and his fathers impending marriage. Great action. Really enjoyed the book.
Wallender as usual morose. Nice storyline involving his daughter Linda and his fathers impending marriage. Great action. Really enjoyed the book.
Read
April 8, 2015Here the world of Swedish detective Kurt Wallander crosses that of South African plotters intent on political murder. I'm not sure if I read this before or after Dogs of Riga. I enjoyed this book, liked the characterisation and the settings, despite the more than slightly stretched set up. It was hard to avoid the feeling that Mankell really was much more interested in writing about southern Africa, where he spent part of the year living for a fair chunk of his life, rather than his shabby Detective living in gloomy Scandinavia.
I was thoroughly involved right up until the second murder, at which point I lost all emotional investment in the story, but if you are a murder mystery fan, you'll probably enjoy this better than I did. Reading teaches me that I'm not suited to the murder mystery genre I suppose. Come the second murder my suspension of disbelief is over, the illusion is gone and I can't see it as anything other than a constructed and unrealistic novel any more.
The reportage of Homicide was probably the last nail in the coffin for me for this kind of book.
I was thoroughly involved right up until the second murder, at which point I lost all emotional investment in the story, but if you are a murder mystery fan, you'll probably enjoy this better than I did. Reading teaches me that I'm not suited to the murder mystery genre I suppose. Come the second murder my suspension of disbelief is over, the illusion is gone and I can't see it as anything other than a constructed and unrealistic novel any more.
The reportage of Homicide was probably the last nail in the coffin for me for this kind of book.
July 7, 2024
In peaceful southern Sweden Louise Akerblom, an estate agent, pillar of the Methodist Church, wife and mother, suddenly disappears. There is no explanation and no motive. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team are called in to investigate.
Wallander has a gut feeling that the victim will never be found alive, but he has no idea how far his search for the killer will touch his own family. Meanwhile in South Africa, Nelson Mandela has made his long walk to freedom, setting in train the country's painful journey towards the end of apartheid. Wallander and his colleagues find themselves caught in a complex web of intrigue originating on another continent.
This is the third book in the series and it felt very different from the ones that had gone before. This book felt more like some spy novel written by someone like Tom Clancy or Frederick Forsyth rather a straight forward crime investigation. That isn't to say that it was bad, it was fast paced and well written but it wasn't what I was expecting either.
Wallander has a gut feeling that the victim will never be found alive, but he has no idea how far his search for the killer will touch his own family. Meanwhile in South Africa, Nelson Mandela has made his long walk to freedom, setting in train the country's painful journey towards the end of apartheid. Wallander and his colleagues find themselves caught in a complex web of intrigue originating on another continent.
This is the third book in the series and it felt very different from the ones that had gone before. This book felt more like some spy novel written by someone like Tom Clancy or Frederick Forsyth rather a straight forward crime investigation. That isn't to say that it was bad, it was fast paced and well written but it wasn't what I was expecting either.
May 6, 2022
Qué viajesote este librooooo. Me tuvo con la ansia. Y también creo que por toooodo lo que trata me hizo querer mucho a Mankell. Me parece un señor blanco muy entendido de sus privilegios y que los usa pa cuestionar el racismo y la misoginia y la xenofobia. Me surge la duda de cómo leería esta novela une lectore racializado por aquello que toca de Sudáfrica pero por lo demás estoy lista para entrarle de lleno a los 12 libros de Kurt Wallander.
November 16, 2014
This is the third book of the Wallander series.
The plot is around an execution-style murder of a Swedish housewife. This apparent simple investigation unmasks a murder plot against President De Klerk and the future South-african president Nelson Mandela. A ex-KGB agent together with a mercenary south-african will be responsible for such political outrage.
As usual, Inspector Wallander gives his own personal way in this crime investigation.
The book's tittle refers to an albino lioness and its real meaning is given below:
Page 383:
He was thinking about the white lioness. A symbol of Africa, he thought. The animal at rest, the calm before it gets to its feet and musters all its strength. The beast of prey one cannot afford to wound, but which has to be killed if it starts to attack.
A movie was made based on this book: The White Lioness (1996).
And Keneth Branagah played the role of Kurt Wallander in BBC Series - The White Lioness (2015).
The plot is around an execution-style murder of a Swedish housewife. This apparent simple investigation unmasks a murder plot against President De Klerk and the future South-african president Nelson Mandela. A ex-KGB agent together with a mercenary south-african will be responsible for such political outrage.
As usual, Inspector Wallander gives his own personal way in this crime investigation.
The book's tittle refers to an albino lioness and its real meaning is given below:
Page 383:
He was thinking about the white lioness. A symbol of Africa, he thought. The animal at rest, the calm before it gets to its feet and musters all its strength. The beast of prey one cannot afford to wound, but which has to be killed if it starts to attack.
A movie was made based on this book: The White Lioness (1996).
And Keneth Branagah played the role of Kurt Wallander in BBC Series - The White Lioness (2015).
May 18, 2023
4 stars, a little lengthy.
October 20, 2013
Book Review
The White Lioness, the third in the Kurt Wallander series is perhaps intended as Mankell's most ambitious Wallander novel to date. I say "intended" because on some levels it doesn't succeed as such. I'm a big fan of Wallander: his idiosyncrasies, his anti-authority attitude, his loneliness and faltering family relations - they all evoke a reader's empathy in just the right amounts - but Mankell's ambitions to incorporate in this book a world stage of politics, assassinations, and third person point of views stretching across two continents may have stretched this book beyond the pale of a single mystery novel.
This book was published some 20 years since Henning Mankell's first trip to the African continent, a continent he now calls his second home. We write what we know and so it is to be expected that some of Mankell's fondness for Africa would show up in a Wallander book (he has written stand alones that focus on Africa, novels such as A Treacherous Paradise, The Eye of the Leopard, or his Chronicler of the Winds), but the case can be made that as an author just because you know Africa or love its people, it doesn't mean that one should attempt to incorporate it in a Wallander series that takes place far removed from such passions.
This can create problems for the author. For example: Kurt Wallander is relatively ignorant of international politics (we know this from reading Dog of Riga). To create a book that focuses on the flammable politics of a nation far removed and place it within a Wallander book can stretch a reader's credulity as it did with me. To circumvent this problem, Mankell created various third person viewpoints that includes allowing the reader to enter the mind of de Klerk, president of South Africa. It didn't work for me. Not when reading a Wallander book.
This is not to say that the parts taking place in South Africa didn't evoke interest. Mankell does a good job of outlining the problem and giving some salient plot elements to drive the point home...but in many ways it was a superficial glossing over and served to divide the book so that it became as if I were reading two novels, instead of one. (Reminder to self: read one of Mankell's stand-alones taking place in Africa). The metaphor of the White Lioness concretized by an observation of several very minor characters while on safari works only to a certain degree to accent the issue of apartheid. Did it really drive home the essence of the novel? I didn't think so.
On the other hand, I had a few problems with the aspects of this novel that take place in Sweden. I know Wallander despises authority, I know he bucks the system...but to start pointing guns at his colleagues, and to wander into a fog like a lunatic without sufficient cause when the solution is to behave rationally to outsmart a villain? What is the deep underlying cause for this behavior? Lack of sleep? I don't think so, Wallander has never slept well.
Having said all of the above and the resultant 3 star rating, I still enjoyed the book. That after all, is the magic of Henning Mankell. To cause us to care about Wallander.
-----------------------------------------------------
Series Review
Henning Mankell is an internationally known Swedish crime writer known mostly for this fictional character Kurt Wallander. He is married to Eva Bergman.
Henning Mankell - Author
It might be said that the fall of communism and the consequent increase in Swedish immigration and asylum seekers has been the engine that drives much of Swedish crime fiction. Mankell's social conscience, his cool attitude towards nationalism and intolerance is largely a result of the writer's commitment to helping the disadvantaged (see his theater work in Africa). In this vein, readers might be interested in his stand-alone novel Kennedy's Brain a thriller set in Africa and inspired by the AIDS epidemic (Mankell often traveled to Africa to help third world populations); or read his The Eye of the Leopard, a haunting novel juxtaposing a man's coming of age in Sweden and his life in Zambia.
Mankell's love of Africa, his theater work on that continent, and his exploits in helping the disadvantaged is not generally known by his American readers. In fact, an international news story that has largely gone unnoticed is that while the world watched as Israeli soldiers captured ships attempting to break the Gaza blockade, few people are aware that among the prisoners of the Israelis was one of the world's most successful and acclaimed writers: Henning Mankell.
It is no exaggeration when I say that Henning Mankell is by far one of the most successful writers in Scandinavia, especially in his own country of Sweden. The Nordic weather, cold to the bones, drives its populace indoors for much of the year where cuddling up to read the latest in crime fiction is a national pastime.
For many GR readers who have been introduced to Kurt Wallander it is interesting to note that ultimately the success of bringing Mankell to English speaking audiences only came after bringing in the same production company responsible for Steig Larsson's Millennium trilogy for the wildly popular BBC version starring Kenneth Branagh. Viewers had no problem with an anglicized version of Mankell's work, an English speaking cast set down in a genuine Swedish countryside. Of course, to those fans thoroughly familiar with Mankell's work, it is the Swedish televised version that is found to be a more accurately portrayal of Mankell's novels...not the British, sensationalized version. And there's a reason for that.
Henning's prose is straightforward, organized, written mostly in linear fashion, a straightforward contract with the reader. It is largely quantified as police procedural work. The work of men who are dogged and patient to a fault. Kurt Wallander, the hero in Mankell's novels, is the alter ego of his creator: a lonely man, a dogged policeman, a flawed hero, out of shape, suffering from headaches and diabetes, and possessing a scarred soul. Understandably so and if some of the GR reviews are an indication; like his famous father-in-law Ingmar Bergman, Mankell is from a country noted for its Nordic gloom. But before you make the assumption that this is yet another addition to the somberness and darkness that characterizes Nordic writing Mankell often confounds this cliche with guarded optimism and passages crammed with humanity (for Mankell, this is true both personally and professionally as a writer).
As Americans we often think of Sweden as possessing an very open attitude towards sex and that this is in marked contrast (or perhaps reprieve) to the somber attitudes of its populace. But this is a view that often confounds Swedish people. The idea of Nordic carnality is notably absent in Mankell's work, as much a statement of its erroneous perception (Swedes do not see themselves as part of any sexual revolution at all) and in the case of Mankell ironic because the film director most responsible for advancing these explicit sexual parameters (for his time) was his own father-in-law the great Ingmar Bergman. In a world where Bergman moves in a universe where characters are dark, violent, extreme and aggressive - take note that the ultimate root of this bloody death and ennui lies in the Norse and Icelandic Viking sagas of Scandinavian history - that dark, somber view ascribed to both Mankell and Bergman's work was often a topic of intense jovial interest between these two artists.
For any reader of Nordic crime fiction, Henning Mankell is an immensely popular and staple read.
Enjoy!
The White Lioness, the third in the Kurt Wallander series is perhaps intended as Mankell's most ambitious Wallander novel to date. I say "intended" because on some levels it doesn't succeed as such. I'm a big fan of Wallander: his idiosyncrasies, his anti-authority attitude, his loneliness and faltering family relations - they all evoke a reader's empathy in just the right amounts - but Mankell's ambitions to incorporate in this book a world stage of politics, assassinations, and third person point of views stretching across two continents may have stretched this book beyond the pale of a single mystery novel.
This book was published some 20 years since Henning Mankell's first trip to the African continent, a continent he now calls his second home. We write what we know and so it is to be expected that some of Mankell's fondness for Africa would show up in a Wallander book (he has written stand alones that focus on Africa, novels such as A Treacherous Paradise, The Eye of the Leopard, or his Chronicler of the Winds), but the case can be made that as an author just because you know Africa or love its people, it doesn't mean that one should attempt to incorporate it in a Wallander series that takes place far removed from such passions.
This can create problems for the author. For example: Kurt Wallander is relatively ignorant of international politics (we know this from reading Dog of Riga). To create a book that focuses on the flammable politics of a nation far removed and place it within a Wallander book can stretch a reader's credulity as it did with me. To circumvent this problem, Mankell created various third person viewpoints that includes allowing the reader to enter the mind of de Klerk, president of South Africa. It didn't work for me. Not when reading a Wallander book.
This is not to say that the parts taking place in South Africa didn't evoke interest. Mankell does a good job of outlining the problem and giving some salient plot elements to drive the point home...but in many ways it was a superficial glossing over and served to divide the book so that it became as if I were reading two novels, instead of one. (Reminder to self: read one of Mankell's stand-alones taking place in Africa). The metaphor of the White Lioness concretized by an observation of several very minor characters while on safari works only to a certain degree to accent the issue of apartheid. Did it really drive home the essence of the novel? I didn't think so.
On the other hand, I had a few problems with the aspects of this novel that take place in Sweden. I know Wallander despises authority, I know he bucks the system...but to start pointing guns at his colleagues, and to wander into a fog like a lunatic without sufficient cause when the solution is to behave rationally to outsmart a villain? What is the deep underlying cause for this behavior? Lack of sleep? I don't think so, Wallander has never slept well.
Having said all of the above and the resultant 3 star rating, I still enjoyed the book. That after all, is the magic of Henning Mankell. To cause us to care about Wallander.
-----------------------------------------------------
Series Review
Henning Mankell is an internationally known Swedish crime writer known mostly for this fictional character Kurt Wallander. He is married to Eva Bergman.
Henning Mankell - Author
It might be said that the fall of communism and the consequent increase in Swedish immigration and asylum seekers has been the engine that drives much of Swedish crime fiction. Mankell's social conscience, his cool attitude towards nationalism and intolerance is largely a result of the writer's commitment to helping the disadvantaged (see his theater work in Africa). In this vein, readers might be interested in his stand-alone novel Kennedy's Brain a thriller set in Africa and inspired by the AIDS epidemic (Mankell often traveled to Africa to help third world populations); or read his The Eye of the Leopard, a haunting novel juxtaposing a man's coming of age in Sweden and his life in Zambia.
Mankell's love of Africa, his theater work on that continent, and his exploits in helping the disadvantaged is not generally known by his American readers. In fact, an international news story that has largely gone unnoticed is that while the world watched as Israeli soldiers captured ships attempting to break the Gaza blockade, few people are aware that among the prisoners of the Israelis was one of the world's most successful and acclaimed writers: Henning Mankell.
It is no exaggeration when I say that Henning Mankell is by far one of the most successful writers in Scandinavia, especially in his own country of Sweden. The Nordic weather, cold to the bones, drives its populace indoors for much of the year where cuddling up to read the latest in crime fiction is a national pastime.
For many GR readers who have been introduced to Kurt Wallander it is interesting to note that ultimately the success of bringing Mankell to English speaking audiences only came after bringing in the same production company responsible for Steig Larsson's Millennium trilogy for the wildly popular BBC version starring Kenneth Branagh. Viewers had no problem with an anglicized version of Mankell's work, an English speaking cast set down in a genuine Swedish countryside. Of course, to those fans thoroughly familiar with Mankell's work, it is the Swedish televised version that is found to be a more accurately portrayal of Mankell's novels...not the British, sensationalized version. And there's a reason for that.
Henning's prose is straightforward, organized, written mostly in linear fashion, a straightforward contract with the reader. It is largely quantified as police procedural work. The work of men who are dogged and patient to a fault. Kurt Wallander, the hero in Mankell's novels, is the alter ego of his creator: a lonely man, a dogged policeman, a flawed hero, out of shape, suffering from headaches and diabetes, and possessing a scarred soul. Understandably so and if some of the GR reviews are an indication; like his famous father-in-law Ingmar Bergman, Mankell is from a country noted for its Nordic gloom. But before you make the assumption that this is yet another addition to the somberness and darkness that characterizes Nordic writing Mankell often confounds this cliche with guarded optimism and passages crammed with humanity (for Mankell, this is true both personally and professionally as a writer).
As Americans we often think of Sweden as possessing an very open attitude towards sex and that this is in marked contrast (or perhaps reprieve) to the somber attitudes of its populace. But this is a view that often confounds Swedish people. The idea of Nordic carnality is notably absent in Mankell's work, as much a statement of its erroneous perception (Swedes do not see themselves as part of any sexual revolution at all) and in the case of Mankell ironic because the film director most responsible for advancing these explicit sexual parameters (for his time) was his own father-in-law the great Ingmar Bergman. In a world where Bergman moves in a universe where characters are dark, violent, extreme and aggressive - take note that the ultimate root of this bloody death and ennui lies in the Norse and Icelandic Viking sagas of Scandinavian history - that dark, somber view ascribed to both Mankell and Bergman's work was often a topic of intense jovial interest between these two artists.
For any reader of Nordic crime fiction, Henning Mankell is an immensely popular and staple read.
Enjoy!
December 13, 2020
Siempre me han gustado los libros de Mankell, sobre todo los del inspector Kurt Wallander. Tengo algunos (pocos) aún sin leer, los voy dosificando, porque se que ya no habrá más. Mankell me introdujo en la novela negra sueca y me enganchó, aunque, al menos por ahora, para mí, no ha habido nadie que lo supere o iguale. Sus tramas son muy elaboradas, muy bien hechas y nada tópicas. Historias con personajes muy bien trazados y humanos. Wallander es, aparte de inspector, humano, con sus virtudes y sus fallos, no es un superdetective, es humano y eso hace que me acerque más al personaje, que me lo crea más. Una novela de diez en la que Mankell vuelve a superarse una vez más.
December 8, 2022
Quand Kurt Wallender enquête sur un étrange assassinat d'une Suédoise en Scanirsans histoire et sauve Mandella de l'assassinat! Rocambolesque mais passionnant. Une fiction sur fond d'appartheid bien réel en Afrique du Sud, au moment charnière où tout va basculer au pays des Sprinboks, quand De Klerk et le plus célèbre prisonnier de l'histoire ont décidé de rendre l'Afrique du Sud aux Africains, les vrais, les noirs...
Juste un petit hiatus. Wallender mis en congé pendant des mois mais revenu à temps pour sauver Mandella, accroc chronologique... ou j'ai mal interprété? Sans doute la deuxième hypothèse...
Juste un petit hiatus. Wallender mis en congé pendant des mois mais revenu à temps pour sauver Mandella, accroc chronologique... ou j'ai mal interprété? Sans doute la deuxième hypothèse...
December 18, 2023
Kayıplarla, cinayetlerle, suikastlerle dolu bir roman. Seri devam ettikçe güzelleşiyor, bir o kadar da karmaşıklaşıyor. Karmaşayı kesinlikle olumsuz anlamda kullanmıyorum. Konular büyük bir coğrafyaya, ilginç siyasi figürlere uzanıyor. Hacimli de bir kitap olmasına karşın okuru sıkmıyor. Hatta Mankell failleri gizlemiyor. Birçok olayı kim yaptı sorusuyla değil motivasyonları neydi sorusuyla okutuyor. Son sayfaya dek heyecanla okudum.
March 16, 2011
I approached The White Lioness tentatively, afraid that I wouldn't like it and that it could very well mark the end of my appreciation for the written Wallander.
Faceless Killers was a somewhat uninspired though compelling murder mystery. It was straightforward, and exactly what one would expect from the story of a taciturn Swedish cop in quiet Ystad. Coupled with the BBC movies, it was more than enough to make me want to proceed in the series. Dogs of Riga, however, was something else entirely. It wasn't bad, but it was thoroughly unexpected. It was a political thriller in the guise of a cop mystery, and Kurt Wallander's foray into Latvia felt too forced and uncharacteristic (despite the book's early place in the Wallander chronology) to rise above Mankell's personal, political agenda. It wasn't bad, but it made me wary of what might come next.
Once I saw the map of South Africa and the disclaimer at the beginning of The White Lioness, I was even more frightened: "Since The White Lioness was first published in 1993, some towns and areas in South Africa have been renamed. The names in use then have been retained here.”
“Uh-oh,” I thought, “Another Dogs of Riga. And to some extent it was, but in a more masterful and confident way. Mankell does with The White Lioness what he probably should have done with its predecessor. He tells two parallel stories: one is a tense murder mystery starring Kurt Wallander at his unpredictable best; the other is a suspenseful political thriller set in de Klerk’s Africa at the tail end of apartheid. This time, however, he doesn’t try to force Wallander into a foreign trip. He doesn’t embroil Wallander in a Jason Bourne style international action story. Instead, he lets these two stories bleed into each other in their separate countries, showing us how the actions of men and women in Sweden and South Africa simultaneously and unwittingly affect the other.
The two stories are constantly and necessarily tied together, but few of the important characters ever meet.
It is an impressive balancing act, and it ratchets up the suspense to a level I’ve never before experienced in a Wallander book. This was the first one I couldn’t put down, and I didn’t want it to end. It’s a real shame that The White Lioness is so rooted in its time and place. An assassination attempt on Nelson Mandela would not have the same implications today, which means that this story, barring an attempted big screen period piece, will never make it to the screen, at least not with Branagh as Wallander.
How I would love to see it, though. This really is an excellent Wallander tale. The Dogs of Riga have been put to rest.
Faceless Killers was a somewhat uninspired though compelling murder mystery. It was straightforward, and exactly what one would expect from the story of a taciturn Swedish cop in quiet Ystad. Coupled with the BBC movies, it was more than enough to make me want to proceed in the series. Dogs of Riga, however, was something else entirely. It wasn't bad, but it was thoroughly unexpected. It was a political thriller in the guise of a cop mystery, and Kurt Wallander's foray into Latvia felt too forced and uncharacteristic (despite the book's early place in the Wallander chronology) to rise above Mankell's personal, political agenda. It wasn't bad, but it made me wary of what might come next.
Once I saw the map of South Africa and the disclaimer at the beginning of The White Lioness, I was even more frightened: "Since The White Lioness was first published in 1993, some towns and areas in South Africa have been renamed. The names in use then have been retained here.”
“Uh-oh,” I thought, “Another Dogs of Riga. And to some extent it was, but in a more masterful and confident way. Mankell does with The White Lioness what he probably should have done with its predecessor. He tells two parallel stories: one is a tense murder mystery starring Kurt Wallander at his unpredictable best; the other is a suspenseful political thriller set in de Klerk’s Africa at the tail end of apartheid. This time, however, he doesn’t try to force Wallander into a foreign trip. He doesn’t embroil Wallander in a Jason Bourne style international action story. Instead, he lets these two stories bleed into each other in their separate countries, showing us how the actions of men and women in Sweden and South Africa simultaneously and unwittingly affect the other.
The two stories are constantly and necessarily tied together, but few of the important characters ever meet.
It is an impressive balancing act, and it ratchets up the suspense to a level I’ve never before experienced in a Wallander book. This was the first one I couldn’t put down, and I didn’t want it to end. It’s a real shame that The White Lioness is so rooted in its time and place. An assassination attempt on Nelson Mandela would not have the same implications today, which means that this story, barring an attempted big screen period piece, will never make it to the screen, at least not with Branagh as Wallander.
How I would love to see it, though. This really is an excellent Wallander tale. The Dogs of Riga have been put to rest.
March 12, 2015
Mankell undertook a difficult premise ... major related crimes on two continents, without much coordination between the police. I am intrigued by Wallender with all of his flaws and uncertainties. The African side was relatively weaker, with no well-developed characters to care about. The ending was staged and anti-climatic. So I gave it 3*** on a stretch. Other books in this series are better.
April 9, 2019
Great storyline. A wee bit too long for me. Kurt Wallander is an interesting inspector.
March 19, 2016
Tales of two countries, bound by a telex. That’s how I thought of summarizing this book set in Sweden and South Africa.
I have been repeatedly urged to read Mankell by many crime novel aficionados due to his pre-occupation with global themes and issues that go beyond the crime genre. After watching the very satisfying Wallander tele-drama series, where the focus was purely on the insomniac policeman who defies protocol, and after a recent visit to South Africa, I finally picked up this novel, but was left wanting.
First of all, Wallander is reduced to a bit-player in a global plot to murder Nelson Mandela; secondly, there are two different novels here, one taking place in Sweden and the other in South Africa, both lacking in substance and seemingly bound together to provide more robustness to the novel as a whole, but still falling short; thirdly, the clunky writing style, with many POVs, all of them quite similar and none producing any character delineation other than through “telling” on the part of the author; and fourth, the multiplicity of plot and character inconsistencies and contrivances that suggest the author was working to accomplish a daily output of words, with only a broad outline in hand, and was grabbing at devices and chunks of exposition at random to get through his quota on schedule. And the metaphor of the white lioness simply does not work. Die-hard Wallander and Mankell fans may disagree with me, but there were many times when I thought of laying this novel down, but I kept going, for I was curious to see how things would pan out.
On the credit side, in the Swedish story, Wallander, as the very human cop doing a terrible job— bothered by his aging and his relationships with his father, daughter and an absentee girlfriend, suffering from his neuroses, melting down when he kills someone, playing Lone Ranger—makes for an engaging character. I wondered why the Swedish police force would tolerate such behaviour? On the South African side, the evil Apartheid system is laid bare at the pivotal point when regime and system change is about to occur, creating conditions for ruthless retaliation. But the author’s popping into the heads of real-life people like Botha, de Klerk and Mandela comes as a bit of a stretch. And the stitching of the two narratives, although mirroring Mankell’s dual life lived in Africa and Sweden, does not make them hang well together either.
I’m told that The White Lioness has been televised in Season 4 of the series, which I haven’t watched yet, and with Kenneth Branagh once again playing our drowsy cop. I will look forward eagerly to watching this new series—Mankell’s creation comes across better on film than on the page.
I have been repeatedly urged to read Mankell by many crime novel aficionados due to his pre-occupation with global themes and issues that go beyond the crime genre. After watching the very satisfying Wallander tele-drama series, where the focus was purely on the insomniac policeman who defies protocol, and after a recent visit to South Africa, I finally picked up this novel, but was left wanting.
First of all, Wallander is reduced to a bit-player in a global plot to murder Nelson Mandela; secondly, there are two different novels here, one taking place in Sweden and the other in South Africa, both lacking in substance and seemingly bound together to provide more robustness to the novel as a whole, but still falling short; thirdly, the clunky writing style, with many POVs, all of them quite similar and none producing any character delineation other than through “telling” on the part of the author; and fourth, the multiplicity of plot and character inconsistencies and contrivances that suggest the author was working to accomplish a daily output of words, with only a broad outline in hand, and was grabbing at devices and chunks of exposition at random to get through his quota on schedule. And the metaphor of the white lioness simply does not work. Die-hard Wallander and Mankell fans may disagree with me, but there were many times when I thought of laying this novel down, but I kept going, for I was curious to see how things would pan out.
On the credit side, in the Swedish story, Wallander, as the very human cop doing a terrible job— bothered by his aging and his relationships with his father, daughter and an absentee girlfriend, suffering from his neuroses, melting down when he kills someone, playing Lone Ranger—makes for an engaging character. I wondered why the Swedish police force would tolerate such behaviour? On the South African side, the evil Apartheid system is laid bare at the pivotal point when regime and system change is about to occur, creating conditions for ruthless retaliation. But the author’s popping into the heads of real-life people like Botha, de Klerk and Mandela comes as a bit of a stretch. And the stitching of the two narratives, although mirroring Mankell’s dual life lived in Africa and Sweden, does not make them hang well together either.
I’m told that The White Lioness has been televised in Season 4 of the series, which I haven’t watched yet, and with Kenneth Branagh once again playing our drowsy cop. I will look forward eagerly to watching this new series—Mankell’s creation comes across better on film than on the page.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,438 reviews