CRIME
THE TROUBLED MAN BY HENNING MANKELL (Harvill Secker £17.99)
Just as I begin to see the point of the charisma-bypassed detective Kurt Wallander, his creator decides to deal him a mortal blow. I won’t tell you what happens to him (so poignant that even this emotionally blunted reviewer felt a tear welling) but this is Wallander’s last appearance and Sweden is apparently a nation in mourning.
The ‘troubled man’ of the title refers to Hakan von Enke, a retired naval officer whose son is engaged to Wallander’s daughter Linda. When Hakan vanishes one day without trace, Wallander recalls how, a few months previously at a party to celebrate his 75th birthday, the old man had seemed frightened as he recounted a controversial incident from his past in the Swedish navy.
His hunch that this might be linked to his disappearance leads Wallander into very murky waters surrounding events during the Cold War and the hunt for a spy who was leaking submarine movement details to the Russians.
This storyline develops into a plot as twisted and exciting as any Le Carre thriller but it also becomes clear that Wallander himself is a troubled man - thrilled by the birth of his first granddaughter, yet terrified by the thought of his inevitable declined and full of both regret for the past and fear of the future - somebody, in fact, who has finally become real for me.
THE HOLLOW MAN BY OLIVER HARRIS (Cape £12.99)
First in a new series set in contemporary London introduces detective Nick Belsey waking up before dawn, hungover, bankrupt, and with the wreckage of a police squad car he can’t recall crashing nearby.
Well, he’s got to be London’s coolest cop, the kind your teenagers would admire, except even Belsey knows the game is up now. Back at Hampstead CID to collect his belongings, a missing person report catches his eye - an adult who has disappeared from his home on The Bishops Avenue, one of the most expensive streets in the world peopled by oligarchs, sheiks and their security guards.
Turns out Alex Devereux, worth a fortune, never seen, lived alone.....there’s a Porsche in the garage, a suicide note on his desk, and Nick glimpses the opportunity for a new life. It’s just a pity that so many other people are looking for Devereux.
Harris has plundered London’s underworld for his richly plotted and unusual detective series - the underworld of the impossibly rich and powerful and corrupt, the kind who bypass governments and laws and financial regulations and will stop at nothing to achieve their aims. It’s heady stuff.
