An Event in Autumn

Starred review from August 11, 2014
Set in 2002, this compelling short novel chronicles an episode in the life of Kurt Wallander shortly before the Swedish detective ended his career in 2011's The Troubled Man. Wallander, who shares his Ystad flat with daughter Linda, decides to look take a look at a house in the country owned by a colleague's relative. He discovers an abandoned farmhouse and, shockingly, "the remains of a human hand, sticking up out of the brown clay soil." The crime scene professionals who take over eventually discover two bodies, their identities completely unknown but foul play suspected. The search for what happened to the victims baffles and consumes Wallander, who observes, "The past has closed all doors behind it." The search for their names and fates propels the book, which has much to say about aging, history, and justice. Mankell's insightful afterword about the genesis of his hero and his initial decision to write crime fiction (to combat racism in Sweden) is a plus.

August 15, 2014
Great news for fans who feared they'd see no more of Kurt Wallander: a characteristically melancholy novella whose events take place in 2002, just before those of Wallander's last appearance (The Troubled Man, 2011). The most beloved curmudgeon of the Ystad police is feeling his age, his temperament and his mortality. Would a change of scene help? His colleague Martinson offers him first crack at a country home he's selling for his wife's cousin, now grown old and senile. Although Wallander's skeptical about the place, it turns out to be absolutely perfect except for the skeletal hand he finds sticking up from the yard just as he's about to leave. His find is at least 50 years old, but it gives him pause. And the discovery of two equally old skeletons on the grounds effectively kills his appetite for buying the house. But now at least his life has been given new purpose: to figure out who killed these two victims, both dead by violence, and why no one in town ever reported them missing. A promising lead that turns out to be a red herring ends up providing a clue that leads to the murderer, whom Wallander confronts in a highly implausible but utterly satisfying sequence. Miraculously, nothing about the story's small scale prevents Wallander from casting a shadow as long as ever, and many readers will be less concerned with how he winds up the mystery than with whether he ends up purchasing that house after all. As a bonus, Mankell (A Treacherous Paradise, 2013, etc.) appends a reminiscence of Wallander's creation and a brief account of this tale's composition that includes its saddest sentence: "There are no more stories about Kurt Wallander."

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