Rating: 
Summary: Plodding procedural-- the Detective is pooped and so am I
Review: Detective Kurt Wallander is professionally cautious and thoughtful (dull), personally abrupt, a bit on the insensitive side. Wallander struggles to accept his father's death, and wonders if he can build a new life for himself, maybe remarry, maybe buy a house and a dog. He philosophizes a bit about the apparent rise of violent crime in Sweden. It crosses his mind more than once to give up police work. This is probably more realistic than many detective stories, because there's no Sherlockian detection going on-- just a roomful of cops going over a collection of facts they've gone over more than once already. They're tired. They haven't had any sleep. You really feel their fatigue. And it takes the cops forever to notice clues, long after Mankell has revealed them to the reader. I wanted to scream, "Open the drawer!!! Would you look in the freakin' desk drawer!!!" and the like.
Rating: 
Summary: Plodding Police Investigation
Review: Disappointing read. Detective Wallander is the epitome of doom and gloom throughout, a rather pathetic main character, who doesn't seem able to get his life together. The plot is slow-moving, and the ending a foregone conclusion. No twists or surprises there.
Rating:
Summary: Plodding Police Investigation
Review: Disappointing read. Detective Wallander is the epitome of doom and gloom throughout, a rather pathetic main character, who doesn't seem able to get his life together. The plot is slow-moving, and the ending a foregone conclusion. No twists or surprises there.
Rating: 
Summary: The Ghost of Martin Beck Rises
Review: Fans of the Maj Sjowall/ Per Wahloo Martin Beck series will be right at home here in Henning Mankell's modern-day Sweden. We're on familiar turf as a tray of home-made rusks is offered to detective Kurt Wallander. (What are they, anyway?) "The Fifth Woman" is a taut, suspenseful, hard-to-put-down detective novel that combines all the best of the Sjowall/Wahloo series with an updated look at Sweden in the '90s. (Perhaps not so different from that Sweden of the '60s and '70s.) And if it's possible, readers of previous Mankells in the series will be glad to know that Mankell gets better with each novel.
Rating:
Summary: Gore galore
Review: Fifth Woman is a gripping read, and Kurt Wallender is a surprisingly sympathetic protagonist. Mankell does a good job of placing the characters in a clearly drawn milieu that does recall the Sjowall/Wahloo Martin Beck mysteries of the 1960s and 1970s.
To me, however, the book just seems too violent and vivid to be a really good police procedural. The serial killings at the center of the plot are barbaric and complicated; they remind me of the movie "Seven" in their stagy nature.
Those incongruities aside, I found the book to be an intelligent and absorbing thriller. You will certainly impress your friends by carrying this book around in your briefcase.
Rating:
Summary: Swedish serial murder mystery
Review: Henning Mankell once again demonstrates his masterful creativity in his police procedural thriller "The Fifth Woman". What makes Mankell's work so special is his ability to humanize his protagonist Kurt Wallendar, police detective inspector of the Ystad police department. Wallendar, the senior inspector has personal issues that Mankell delves into, that have a profound effect on his actions. While conducting an investigation into a series of bizarre murders, Wallendar's father dies. He is also struggling emotionallly with a long distance relationship with his girlfriend Baiba who resides in Latvia.
The novel commences with the murder of a wealthy, aged and retired auto salesman, Holger Eriksson, in very strange fashion. The gentleman, an avid ornithologist, while walking across a footbridge on his property was impaled on a series of sharpened bamboo poles as the sawed through planks of the bridge collapsed under his weight. The poles had been set in the fashion of a tiger trap in the ditch beneath the bridge. Wallendar soon becomes aware that Eriksson has a history of abusing women.
We also get an insight into the motivation of the nameless killer of Eriksson. She apparently was incited by a letter she received against regulations from Africa. Her mother who was traveling got caught up in religious and social upheaval there and was murdered along with four nuns, effectively becoming the fifth woman. A sympathetic investigator aware of the cover up of the murders released the personal effects of the mother.
Soon the killer commits another murder of a florist who it turns out was also abusive and possibly killed his wife. Wallendar with scant clues to go on leads the investigation in a methodical, analytical manner which slowly uncovers the answers to solving this series of crimes. Unfortunately more murders are committed and because of the violence citizens begin to form militias which hamper the investigation.
Mankell has proven to be a very capable author and deserves a higher level of notoriety than he currently receives. His novels are gripping with a large dose of believability. He represents a noteworthy benchmark in his genre
Rating:
Summary: One step behind
Review: Henning Mankell really nails you to your reading chair from page one with his subtle and quiet horror stories where there is a minimum of the graphical violence you so often see in American thrillers these days. Mankell has an ingenius way of building up his stories which will keep you mystified till the end. He is also weaving into the fabric a honest description of Sweden on the social level and of how police work is developing in the Scandinavian countries. You get to like this Wallander and his Swedish colleagues so much that you are sad when the last page is turned.
Rating:
Summary: Worthy Successor to Sjowall and Wahloo.
Review: I picked up "The Fifth Woman" by Henning Mankell because a reviewer favorably compared it to the classic "The Laughing Policeman" by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo (Swedish wife/husband writing team). It doesn't disappoint. This is a book that is worth the price of a hardcover -- meaty, substantive, intricately/well plotted, with great characters. The three things I noticed that bind all three authors in their works are: 1) the Swedish people's dislike and distrust of the police, 2) the chill and loneliness that seems to pervade human relationships, and 3) police inspectors who are brilliant, meticulous, conscientious, introspective and given to depression. These Swedish police procedurals are not a barrel of laughs, but rather they are thoughtful, well written, and original. "The Fifth Woman" starts out with the murders in Africa of 4 nuns and a female visitor. The rest of the novel takes place with these murders' ramifications in Sweden where a serial killer is dispatching men, each very differently. The title refers not only to the 5th woman murdered in Africa, but also the 5th woman in Sweden who leads police inspector, Kurt Wallander, to the Swedish serial murderer. American police procedurals tend to reveal more murder motives from the get-go. In this novel the motive is a core plot element and isn't revealed until later in the book. The reader also knows a few things about the killer early in the book that the police don't know and it is fascinating to watch the police reach the "same place in the book" as the reader. I was reading a well regarded American mystery writer and stopped the book to read "The Fifth Woman". When I returned to the American book after finishing Mankell's opus, it was sophmoric in comparison. This is a book for the serious mystery reader and well worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: Worthy Successor to Sjowall and Wahloo.
Review: I picked up "The Fifth Woman" by Henning Mankell because a reviewer favorably compared it to the classic "The Laughing Policeman" by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo (Swedish wife/husband writing team). It doesn't disappoint. This is a book that is worth the price of a hardcover -- meaty, substantive, intricately/well plotted, with great characters. The three things I noticed that bind all three authors in their works are: 1) the Swedish people's dislike and distrust of the police, 2) the chill and loneliness that seems to pervade human relationships, and 3) police inspectors who are brilliant, meticulous, conscientious, introspective and given to depression. These Swedish police procedurals are not a barrel of laughs, but rather they are thoughtful, well written, and original. "The Fifth Woman" starts out with the murders in Africa of 4 nuns and a female visitor. The rest of the novel takes place with these murders' ramifications in Sweden where a serial killer is dispatching men, each very differently. The title refers not only to the 5th woman murdered in Africa, but also the 5th woman in Sweden who leads police inspector, Kurt Wallander, to the Swedish serial murderer. American police procedurals tend to reveal more murder motives from the get-go. In this novel the motive is a core plot element and isn't revealed until later in the book. The reader also knows a few things about the killer early in the book that the police don't know and it is fascinating to watch the police reach the "same place in the book" as the reader. I was reading a well regarded American mystery writer and stopped the book to read "The Fifth Woman". When I returned to the American book after finishing Mankell's opus, it was sophmoric in comparison. This is a book for the serious mystery reader and well worth the effort.
Rating: 
Summary: The Agonising Detective
Review: Kurt Wallander is both the main character and setting of Mankell's 'procedural' crime series. While based in southern Sweden, "The Fifth Woman" is in fact grounded in the rugged landscape of Wallander's interior life - his memories, hopes, shopping lists, prejudices and anxieties. Not since Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder have I read such an angst-ridden and ethically driven protagonist. This is the ultimate introverted hero - he solves crimes using weapons of solitude, intuition, memory-interrogation and a phenonomenal eye for detail. How could you not love a policeman who reminds himself in the midst of the chase to book the laundry room, alert his superiors to a colleague's excessive workload or take time to grieve for his father. Mankell also provides a vivid account of the broader issues that confronted Swedish society in the 1990s - refugees, law and order, social capital and shifting moral foundations. Wallander characterises the times as an age where people have forgotten how to darn their socks, preferring to discard a blemish rather than repair a resource. And the storyline of "The Fifth Woman"? Like Laurie King's "Night Work", "The Fifth Woman" explores issues of violence, revenge and enforcing justice when the system cannot deliver. It is, like Mankell's other Wallander titles, a monumental chronicle of detail, connection and the unfolding of a tightly-bound investigation. The Swedish atmospherics will also help take one's mind off an endless summer.
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