Rating: 
Summary: Swedish serial killer on a rampage
Review: "Sidetracked" is a wonderful example of the impressive writing skill of Swedish author Henning Mankell.
Celebrated police inspector Kurt Wallendar based in the southern town of Ystad is anticipating the start of the summer and a well deserved vacation. Quite unexpectedly he is called to investigate a young girl who has been hiding in a field of rapeseed on a farm on the outskirts of town. After conferring with the aged farmer, he approaches the girl only to watch in horror as she douses herself with gasoline, lights a match and turns herself into a human inferno.
Badly shaken Wallendar returns to the station house confident that the forensic investigation has been properly undertaken. In this usually criminally sedate time of year, he again is jolted to learn of a reported homicide. Previous Minister of Justice Gustaf Wetterstedt, a wealthy, powerful yet despised individual with alleged underworld connections is found in his seaside villa with his head split open by an axe and part of his scalp cut off.
So begins a series of murders committed by a psychopath who fancies himself as being imbued with the spirit of indian chief Geronimo. He paints his face and stalks his victims while walking around barefoot. Soon a wealthy but allegedly corrupt art dealer is also found scalped and his face cleaved by an axe.
Wallendar and his team begin an intensive and exhaustive probe into these violently savage killings which continue on. They are stymied in trying to identify the murderers identity but continue doggedly investigating.
While the psychopathic killer is eventually identified midway through the book, Mankell expertly whets our appetite by giving us little clues as to his psychological profile. When the startling revelation is finally made, we can understand why Wallendar has been flummoxed.
Mankell gives us deep insight into the exasperation of Wallendar and his fellow officers as the inquest spills into the surrounding towns as victims begin mounting. They are tirelessly working against the clock to prevent further killings and Mankell elaborates about the psychological toll that is created.
Mankell is very adept at combining crime drama with its psychological ramifications to create an extremely engrossing novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Swedish Society and Murder
Review: A young girl stands in a field and threatens to immolate herself. She can't be talked out of it, and so she dies. Now follows a series of murders, linked by the common touch of the victim being scalped. The reader knows the murderer, and now waits for Inspector Kurt Wallander to catch up. A nice mystery, but not very profound. But, again, Mankell takes this opportunity to lambaste the Swedish society for corruption, trading in human beings, and the disintegration of the social network.. Otherwise - an easy and intelligent read.
Rating:
Summary: You can't get sidetracked from this book!
Review: After reading a German translation of the original Swedish version of "Sidetracked" by Henning Mankell, I was enthralled by the complexity of the plot and of the main character, Kurt Wallander. Reading this book(my first by Mankell), my apppetite to continue reading his books grew steadily. I had never been a fan of niether murder mysteries nor detective novels, but this book really changed my mind. I highly recommend this to any reader.
Rating:
Summary: You can't get sidetracked from this book!
Review: After reading a German translation of the original Swedish version of "Sidetracked" by Henning Mankell, I was enthralled by the complexity of the plot and of the main character, Kurt Wallander. Reading this book(my first by Mankell), my apppetite to continue reading his books grew steadily. I had never been a fan of niether murder mysteries nor detective novels, but this book really changed my mind. I highly recommend this to any reader.
Rating:
Summary: Another worthy Vintage Crime title.
Review: Henning Mankell, Sidetracked (Vintage, 1995)
Mankell's fourth Kurt Wallander mystery has won awards (or so the Vintage Books blurb on the back cover tells me; I can't seem to find any press releases that actually say which award[s] the book won), been made into a film, and been translated into almost as many languages as your favorite swear words. And yet the name is completely unfamiliar to the vast majority of the American book-buying public, even the mystery fans. Why is that? Because it's on Vintage, whose catalog is more "where we've been" than "what's hot today?" (The Vintage Crime backlist is littered with names like Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith, Raymind Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett; the only "now" author a modern-fiction-blindered fan is likely to recognize is Jonathan Lethem, whose mysteries are, shall we say, decidedly different from what one picks up when one goes for the newest Mysterious Press titles.) Is it because reading translated fiction is kind of like watching a subtitled movie to a certain kind of intellect? Is it because Vintage only gets stray pennies of Knopf's advertising budget? We may never know the answer to this, and other pressing, questions, but we can try to put things right.
First off, if you're a mystery fan of whatever stripe, you should be buying the whole Vintage Crime catalog. Period. Pick up any random book with "Vintage Crime" on the spine and you're going to be well-rewarded. You'll either get a classic, like those mentioned above, something so far out of the mainstream you'd never have discovered it (like Lethem or the spit-funny mysteries of Joe R. Lansdale), or stuff from other countries that's good enough a bunch of people said "hey, why haven't we read an English translation of this guy yet?"Swedish writer Mankell falls into this last category. If you don't know anything about Swedish mysteries, just equate Sweden with Lapland. If you're really a mystery fan, the name Erik Skjodbaerg should come to mind immediately. (Skjoldbaerg wrote and directed one of the finest mystery films of the past thirty years in Insomnia. Forget the watered-down American crap you were spoon-fed a few years back and rent the original, if you haven't seen it.) Sidetracked is no Insomnia, but then, few things are. It's certainly good enough for what it is.
What it is is a police procedural, kind of Giles Blunt crossed with Robert B. Parker with a lot more attention given to the weather and the World Cup. Wallander is awakened one morning close to Midsummer and sent out to a farmer's rape farm, where a girl of indeterminate age has been lurking. When Wallander gets there, she sets herself (and the farmer's crop) on fire. The next day, Wallander and his team are called in to investigate the murder and scalping of a former Minister of Justice. The bosses are hot to get the latter case wrapped up, while Wallander can't shake his interest in the former. Meanwhile, the department faces imminent cutbacks (a familiar refrain to American police-novel readers, no doubt), the World Cup is going on, and Wallander's trying to figure out both how to reconcile with his long-estranged father and balance a relationship (carried over from a previous novel in the series). There's quite a bit going on here, obviously.
To make a long story short, the end result is that some things get lost in the mix. Notably, the relationship between Wallander and Baiba is almost nonexistent here, leading me to wonder if Mankell couldn't have just ignored it for the space of this novel, or relegated it to an even farther seat in the back than it already is. Also, the language stumbles at times, breaking the novel's pace (perhaps reading a translated novel really is like watching a subtitled movie). But still, overall, a very good mystery, and a worthy addition to the mighty Vintage Crime line. *** ½
Rating:
Summary: A grown-up mystery
Review: Here is the problem with Henning Mankell: He writes so well and his plots are so gripping that reading his books almost becomes an obsession.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I found this book subtle, complex and well orchestrated. The psychiatric constructions were both gratifyingly sinister and soundly beleivable to me. The Scandinavian setting was interesting, especially since the author is native to the region, and the approach tacit and natural.
Rating:
Summary: horrendous, beautiful book
Review: Inspector Kurt Wallander of the Ystad police force in south Sweden has to solve his most challenging murder case yet: somebody is killing off elderly men using an axe to split their skulls and scalping them afterwards. It is clear that the killer is meticulously preparing his killings, staking out the victims and making sure nobody sees him. The team of policemen and -women seems to be always one step behind and even the profiler that has come to help them has problems coming up with a good profile of the killer.
What makes this book special is that the reader also gets the perspective of the killer: it soon becomes clear who he is and why he does what he is doing. This could be a major handicap as the book may loose most of its excitement of the "whodunnit", but here this is not the case. This is mainly due to the fact that Kurt Wallander is a full-fetched character with good and bad traits, doubts, hypochondric moments and moments of sudden,clear insight, making it a pleasure to follow how, in the end, he solves the case.
Rating: 
Summary: Poorman's Martin Beck novel
Review: It must be said that this review refers to the translation of the Swedish original and there is always a chance that the blame for this rather boring police procedural lies with the translator. It must also be said that the reviewer was prejudiced by his colleagues that likened Henning Mankell to Ian Rankin and Maj Sjowall/Per Wahloo tandem. Actually I still wonder what the heck they were thinking about alleging similarity of all these authors... Mankell (or his translator) lacks the literary prowess of Rankin and his novels fall short of those produced by Sjowall/Wahloo in the same tongue. Having read all of the Beck's series one has to ask himself - would it hurt to dream up a Swedish detective who isn't divorced, recently lost an investigative soulmate and thus largely talking to himself, has a somewhat strained relationships with an adult daugther, and is in somewhat of a dating limbo? And what's with always pissed forensic experts traveling from one crime novel to another? Maybe it's just me but I couldn't help feeling that Kurt Wallander isn't even trying to escape the likely charge of a literary derivative... Plotwise the book is all "sidetracked"; the author in all honesty tries to come up with a page-turner, but there is a fine line between the intricate web of subplots and twists and simply a messy writing. The introduction of a killer perspective early in the book dumpens the suspense and soon after the third murder the only thing the reader is left to ponder upon is the exact fashion the author himself is going to tie up all the loose ends in his plot.
Rating:
Summary: can't put it down even when spooked
Review: it's so engrossing and so good that it read like a movie that would couldn't wait to see the ending. it spooked me like a good book would do and this sort of mystery applied to me. it had some Swedish names and places to contend with - but besides that it was fast paced and involved. really enjoyed it.
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