The summer of Mankell

After the hottest (and then thunder-iest) Notre Dame football game I've ever been to, Mother Nature decided to do my non-AC apartment a solid and turn cool. I'm currently sitting in my new apartment (which is officially unpacked) with a sweatshirt on, thinking about making cocoa.

Today it feels like summer is over. Which - like everything else - makes me think of reading. This summer I took on Henning Mankell and his Kurt Wallander series.

On the way to Notre Dame I finished Mankell's The Fifth Woman. The last section of the novel was so engrossing I missed my favorite landmark on the way (the Square Bridge). When I asked Ams and Face if we had passed it yet they said, "Umm, yeah, 30 minutes ago."

Wallander #6, The Fifth Woman, concerns the gruesome and escalating murders of men who have mistreated women. It is like a Law and Order episode. Only it is up to Wallander - not Benson and Stabler - to find the murderer and save the long list of not so innocent men.

The most interesting part of the novel is the undercurrent of gender issues which pervade the storyline. Is the killer a woman? Could a woman have committed this crime? Perhaps an American woman, but certainly not a Swedish one.

As with the previous novel, Sidetracked, when dealing with a serial killer, the Swedes turn to American shores for info on serious murderers. Oh, data on how serial killers act? Totally from America.

Go USA?

Since each Wallander can be distilled down to a few words to remember them by, here's a recap of those I've read so far:

Faceless Killers - old people
The Dogs of Riga - Latvia
The White Lioness - Africa
The Man Who Smiled - creepy creepy villain
Sidetracked - scalping murderer
The Fifth Woman - man killer
Firewall - computer hacking

I have three Wallanders and 17 days of summer left.

"Things are as they are."
Henning Mankell