Firewall is a police procedural mystery novel by the superb Swedish author Henning Mankell

Wallender is a veteran detective operating in a small police department in a southern Swedish town. He has become world famous and is portrayed with brilliance by Kenneth Branagh on the PBS Masterpiece Mystery series.
Firewall is one of the most intriguing page turners in the Wallender canon! A computer geek turns up dead at one of the twon's three ATM machines. Meanwhile a 19 and 14 year old girl murder an elderly cab driver with the use of a knife and a steel bar. How are the two incidents related?
Detective Wallender is assigned to the cases. He is 50ish and longs for retirement. Wallender also deals with a feud with fellow detective Martinson and his love life is in shambles. Daughter Linda is a student in Stockholm; he does not see his ex-wife Mona. He longs to revive his romantic relationship with a Latvian widow he met and feel in love with in the novel "The Dogs of Riga." During the telling of "Firewall" he will meet and be attracted to a new woman with lovely legs.
Firewall refers to an access blocking computer wall preventing hackers from obtaining computer information. It also refers to the emotional firewall existing in Wallender's relationships. The novel travels from Angola where we meet the mysterious man who is at the head of an international plot to control the financial markets of the world.
Firewall is set in a brooding, cold and atmospheric Sweden. It is long for a detective novel logging in at over 400 pages in the English translation by Ebba Segerberg. If all you know about Swedish detectives is derived from the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson you owe yourself a favor by reading Mankell's novels!

Author: C. M Mills


Mankel Is the King of Swedish Crime

I've read all of Henning Mankell's Inspector Kurt Wallender series. Mankell is an outstanding writer and Wallender is an interesting, funny, and complex cop who eats, drinks, and smokes too much. He's a real human being who has all kinds of problems including marriage and subsequent love life, and probably suffers from the serious blues if not outright depression. When one reads a Mankell/Wallender book, he or she feels the cold, grey dampness of Sweden and Scandania. The reader feels as if she or he is walking side by side with Wallender and his cop colleagues solving brutal, unspeakable murders. Read the Wallender series in the order each story was published. I think Mankel is finished with Wallender which is as depressing as the snowiest, iciest, darkest, dampest, meanest night in the whole country.

Author: Hoppy


A surprise

I was not aware of this author until I saw his book in Amazon. I bought it as a test subject. The author has an understated way of involving the reader untill the reader is fully ensconced in the story. Who would have thought that a Swedish investigater would be so enthrolling? What a happy surprise. Couldn't wait for the reveal and the next case (book).

Author: Harold Lobel


This Book is Virus-Free

I have read (and reviewed for this site) several Henning Mankell books. Although I enjoyed this book, it is not my favorite Mankell. This is partly because the plot is so dated and partly because it's all somewhat ponderous, something like the central character, Ystad, Sweden Police Inspector Kurt Wallander.

The plot is dated because the year is 1997 (the book was published in 1998) and the story focuses on a field that has undergone vast changes since 1997--computer technology. At the heart of the story is the idea that, by tampering with cyberspace, it's possible to create a global catastrophe. Mankell refers to the Y2K fears (Y2K was three years away in 1997). Of course, we now know that virtually nothing happened on January 1, 2000, and computer infections have not been linked with major world disasters. It seems that the dangers of hacking and viruses have been limited to relatively small populations. Yes, people have suffered because of a virus wiping out their hard drives, but the events have been scattered and, for the most part, quickly contained. We all hope that some time in the very near future we can use our computers like we use our phones--with a sense of security. As for the book, if you take away a sense of danger in cyberspace, you take away most of the steam that drives the story.

Mankell developed a rather complex story with several diverse elements. A man dies (was he murdered?) after making an ATM withdrawal. A taxi driver dies after he is struck with a hammer and stabbed. Fanatics plot a dastardly deed. A corpse is mutilated after being stolen from the morgue. A large power blackout in southern Sweden has a most bizarre cause. And in the middle of it all there is a widely publicized accusation of police brutality directed against none other than Inspector Wallander.

The book kept my interest to the end, but I can see how many readers would find the pace somewhat slow and ponderous. There's a lot of (unnecessary?) detail about things like the weather and what the cast of characters has to eat and drink.



Author: Elliott


vapid

Perhaps it is because of a poor translation from Swedish that I do not appreciate Mr. Mankell's writing, but I couldn't get past page 85.
Yes, there is plot and character development, and there is gray and depressing atmosphere created, but the means by which these are achieved are so utilitarian that I found no pleasure from the book. You could also say that MacDonald's presents a menu.
I felt like I was being barraged by short staccato sentences which were nothing more than information blasts needed to push the plot forward.
Mankell goes into the same stable with Yanni and John Wayne. There is much good literature to be read, and for me life is too short to waste reading Mankell.

Author: Timothy Paradise