ralentina reviewed Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
Why would you write this book?
1 star
Content warning Major spoilers!
Until the last few chapters, I was enjoying this book just fine. I don’t frequently read murder mysteries, but there is no denying we all want to find out who did it. So, I let the story capture me and went along. The social background against which the facts take place in rural Sweden, with its nostalgia for a lost past, its growing inwards migration, and xenophobia, I thought they added just a little weight to the book, in a positive sense. Granted, the celebration of the police and the benevolent understanding of the resentment towards foreigners are not right up my alley, politically, but I was willing to let that go. I even appreciated that the protagonist is himself quite conservative in this respect. [spoiler alert] But towards the end, when it becomes clear that not only the murders are indeed undocumented migrants, but that there is no explanation for their sadistic cruelty, I felt cheated, from a reader’s point of view (why indulge in the murder’s brutality, if it isn’t a clue?), and annoyed, from a citizen / occasional migrant. Really? If a book is going to play with the xenophobia of the public, it needs to do better than this!