English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers discussion
Group read-alongs
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Return of the Dancing Master
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1. Which character do you like the most and why? The least and why?
2. What passage from the book stood out to you?
3. Are there situations and/or characters you can identify with, if so
how?
4. Did you learn something you didn't know before?
5. Do you feel as if your views on a subject have changed by reading the text?
6. Have you had a life changing revelation from reading this text?
7. What major emotion did the story evoke in you as a reader?
8. At what point in the book did you decide if you liked it or not? What helped make this decision?
9. Name your favorite thing overall about the book? Your least favorite?
10. If you could change something about the book what would it be and why?
11. Describe what you liked or disliked about the writers style?
There are many more questions you can think of but these are the current questions.
Thanks for starting the discussion, Kenneth. Is it OK if I just make some general comments now? I know most people in the group are still reading it and I certainly don't want to spoil anything for them.I picked up this book back in 2003/04, by chance from a charity shop, and read it. It's the very first Hennin Mankell book and I fell in love with the writer ever since - not only that, this is also the book I got my husband to read and converted him to a firm Mankell fan too. So to me it's a book with all the wonderful elements that makes it a great read: wonderful characters, action, a great story-line which kept me interested from beginning to end. It's also informative - I learnt a great deal about the Swedish society and its culture and people. It spans into different continent too.
All in all, I loved this book, and I would love to hear how the other respond to it. Enjoy!
I just started this book today and I can't put it down. it grabbed me right away.
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Kenneth wrote: "See you guys in Britain get books a year before we do. We got it around 05. I read it and thought Mankell really wrote it like it was."Until now, I thought you guys across the pond get your hands on books earlier than us, like films etc :) So we are lucky some of the time :)
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Still waiting for my copy to arrive . . .
Crushed my libraries do not have the book. Guess on toAmazon.
38% in according to my kindle and loving it
Laura - just looked on Amazon US site and kindle available at $7.66
*********SPOILERS***********Finished it last night and to be honest I was disappointed. It was a page turner and enjoyable to a certain extent, but I felt that there was a fundamental flaw in Mankell's characterisation.
The big issue for me was the Silberstein/Hereira character. He is a man in his late sixties who spent much of his life in Argentina working as a furniture restorer....and yet he comes to Sweden and he becomes a man capable of hauling the unconscious/dead Molin great distances and twice overpowering a 37 year old policeman before dragging him to a distant house. In addition he is possessed of extraordinary skills more akin to those of a soldier - with various weopons, strangulation, covert surveillance and concealment.
All murder mysteries are to some extent "unbelievable" if you look too deeply into them, but this transformation of the key character was just impossible. If Mankell had used a grandson or set the the novel 30 years earlier, it would have worked so much better.
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I just think that Silberstein/Hereira was blinded by his need for revenge that when he caught up with Molin he went into a frenzy and was capable of things that he normally wouldn't be able to do. He wanted to get his point across that his father would not be forgotten and did not deserve to die at the hand of a coward. He may have been in his 60s but I think he found the strength to do what he did, kind of like a mother whose child is trapped under a car they just find that power to lift up the car to get their child out safely. They dont know where the strength came from but it appeared to get the job done.
I don't really accept either the mad frenzy or maternal type strength argument re the murder of Molin. He had planned it too long and it took place over a fairly prolonged period. In addition he was certainly not in either state when he then dragged or carried Lindman from the old railway station back to the house. Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed it, just thought it had flaws and that Mankell just stretched credulity a tad too far.
Got The Dancing Master yesterday and started it. Hurray!!! Looks good.
I am with Ian on the probability of someone in his 60s doing all that stuff associated with the killing, which seemed unlikely if we look at a normal 60+ year old, but I also agree that there may be motivations that would have taken someone doing things otherwise impossible under normal circumstances. I guess as an author Mankell has taken the liberty to allow Silberstein to go beyond, for a very good reason. For me as a reader, as long as the basic story-line hold water with a message to deliver, combined with the skill to make the readers interested, then I'm game. With fiction, we have to allow certain amount of incredibility. Besides, there are some exceptionally fit elderly people, not necessarily SAS or army trained. My father-in-law is 82 and he plays at Wimbledon :).
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He's ranked at No 10 for the above 80s and lost his recent game to the No1 at Wimbledon :).
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Hi Kenneth. I bet you do. Some people are extraordinary in doing things where most people would have given up given the age or other factors. I have huge respect for people who never give up. Enjoy tennis & reading, not at the same time, obviously :)!
Starting my copy tonight. Anxious to talk about it.
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****SPOILERS*****Have to say I agree with Laura. I enjoyed the read but it did become a bit of a grind two-thirds through and at one point I was seriously considering giving up (I have a big to-read pile glaring at me). I didn't much like, or see the point of, the prologue although I suppose in a way it was one of the reasons I kept reading when I hit the slump - I wanted to understand what the hangman had to do with the plot, so when it turned out he had nothing to do with it (other to mention the more-wicked brother he didn't hang) I was a tad disappointed. And I similarly saw no need for the Scottish epilogue. Perhaps I'm in a minority here, but I don't mind having a few loose ends at the finish of a novel as long as the major strands are tied up. So for me the book was overlong, but it was nevertheless an enjoyable read and I quite liked the worried cop with tongue cancer and his journey through his fear of the disease. And while Veronica was right from the start so obviously a bad 'un (do you think she was based on the Nazi double agent in Raiders of the Lost Ark?) I thought Mankell handled the denouement well - fast paced and gripping. Overall, I liked this book but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to a friend.
Ambiguous is the usual ending in Italian crime fiction - they rarly solve the case.
Yes I gathered that Ian - courtesy of the BBC documentary on Italian Noir. I hear that BBC4 is going to be scaled back due to government cutbacks. I do hope that we don't lose out as they have been so good with Wallander, The Killing etc
*******SPOILERS*******I just finished The Return of the Dancing Master, and unlike some here have posted, I found the last third a real page turner. I was well and truly hooked after the first chapter.
I had so many scenarios going on in my head...I really suspected poor innocent Johansson of being a Nazi "mole". It was beyond credulity to my way of thinking that he could have had those weapons stolen from his home in that manner. But in truth, the way it turned out he was unfit to be a police officer, sadly, so I have to think that explains it.
Plus I kept looking for the hangman's connection. Really Mankell laid some nice red herrings didn't he? :)
The Scottish interlude would have really bothered me if it had not been cleared up, and the way Lindman found Margaret "M" was wonderful.
I've had this on my shelf for several years, and I'm happy this group egged me into finally pulling it from the shelf. :)
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Rachel wrote: "Yes I gathered that Ian - courtesy of the BBC documentary on Italian Noir. I hear that BBC4 is going to be scaled back due to government cutbacks. I do hope that we don't lose out as they have b..."I agree re BBC4 - interestingly The Killing(Danish version with subtitles) got higher viewing figures than Mad Men despite the media hype of the latter.
Kenneth wrote: "Andrea Camilleri and Inspector Montalbano seem to solve the cases that they do. You must mean Donna Leon or another writer?"As Rachel mentioned above, I was going on the info provided in the Italian Noir documentary that was recently on in the UK.
I wouldn't really count Donna Leon as she is an American who writes in English and apparently does not allow her novels to be translated into Italian....so although she lives in Venice, she is not writing for an Italian audience and to me at least, becomes an American thriller writer whose hero happens to be Italian rather than a writer of authentic Italian crime fiction.
This is the blurb that goes with the Italian Noir documentary on the BBC site.
"Documentary which profiles a new wave of Italian crime fiction that has emerged to challenge the conventions of the detective novel. There are no happy endings in these noir tales, only revelations about Italy's dark heart - a world of corruption, unsolved murders and the mafia.
The programme features exclusive interviews with the leading writers from this new wave of noir, including Andrea Camilleri (creator of the Inspector Montablano Mysteries) and Giancarlo De Cataldo (Romanzo Criminale), who explains how his work as a real-life investigating judge inspired his work. From the other side of the law, Massimo Carlotto talks about how his novels were shaped by his wrongful conviction for murder and years spent on the run from the police.
The film also looks at the roots of this new wave. Carlo Emilio Gadda (That Awful Mess) used the detective novel to expose the corruption that existed during Mussolini's fascist regime and then, after the Second World War, Leonardo Sciascia's crime novels (The Day of The Owl) tackled the rise of the Sicilian mafia. These writers established the rules of a new kind of noir that drew on real events and offered no neat endings.
Also featuring Italian writers Carlo Lucarelli and Barbara Baraldi, the film uses rarely seen archive from Italian television."
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I'm happy to open up a separate discussion thread for TV and Films/Movies but let it run itself. Can't see a need for anyone to lead it particularly....just let one and all have their say and see where it takes us.
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I believe the group is set up so that anyone can create a new topic and folder category. Should be able to just click new under discussions and then add folder and post title. If not, let me know and I'll start it.
This is a stand alone book and not part of the Kurt Wallander series, although interestingly enough one of the police officers in this book (Stefan Lindman) also appears in the Kurt and Linda Wallander book "Before the Frost".