This is the sixth of Mankell's Kurt Wallender novels to be printed here in translation, but the third in the series. Like its immediate predecessor, The Dogs of Riga, much of the book takes place outside Wallender's Sweden, this time in South Africa, where forces opposed to the landmark deal made by F W De Klerk and Nelson Mandela are using Sweden as a training base for the assassin whose work will plunge their country into chaos. The sections set in South Africa are fascinating, not least because De Klerk himself appears as a character. His portrayal convinces because it is built on the most simple of human feelings: a moral sense to put things that are wrong right. In a sense this is what Swedes pride themselves on in their own society, but Mankell is concerned with one where change is much more difficult to achieve. Mankell, who has lived much of his life in Mozambique, sees Sweden as an outsider, and is obsessed with his homeland's inescapable drift, an entropic chaos lurking beneath the supposedly well-ordered Swedish society, and its seeming inability to cope with the realities of the rest of the world. Swedish immigration officers arrive late to their jobs, temps in the police forget to send a page of a report to the South Africans, cops on stakeout duty stupidly abandon their posts. Its as if the Swedes are walking around in a daydream, while much of the world lives in nightmare. For Wallender, who in a sense is the antithesis of modern Sweden, this is more than a challenge. He is able to overcome Russian Mafia and South African conspirators simply because he is dogged, plodding but committed. He also receives help from well-meaning friends, who do the best they can, as if inspired by his lonely determination. He is also helped by more than a few instances of fortuitous, shall we say, plot twists. But that is not what Mankell is about. It is a lonely road Wallender walks, and that Mankell moves so smoothly between it and the wider world, in Sweden and in Africa, shows just how powerful a writer he is.
