Sidetracked (1995)

In the Kurt Wallander series so far, the good news for me has been how good Henning Mankell was at creating complicated plots that fall together. In terms of genre, he still seems to me closer to thriller than police procedural. That has been a little disappointing because thrillers generally aren't that thrilling for me—lots of action and movement but inevitably they seem to reach a point where all focus is on some orchestrated Big Event in a big scene. That said, Mankell is tremendously skilled at it. In Sidetracked he reveals very early who the bad guy is, which creates a nice tension when Wallander and/or members of his team are physically in his presence, unknowing. It's a 14-year-old boy with a Native American fixation who is kinda sorta a serial killer. An FBI analyst is on hand consulting with Wallander on the case—a profiler, more or less, still a new idea in the '90s, so I take it this is fairly well grounded in research. Still, this kid is not my idea of a serial killer. He has too much of a concrete motivation, even if it is lunatic. It's lunatic in a rational way, like the Unabomber. He's also over-accomplished, capable of amazing feats, like a superhero or supervillain (looking forward again to Stieg Larsson). Wallander is tormented as usual by social issues within what he considers a decaying social democracy (Sweden), and his personal relations are strained with his father, daughter, and love interest, who first appeared in an earlier novel in the series (The Dogs of Riga) and has lingered on the sidelines since. One of the main themes in Sidetracked is human trafficking and the unscrupulous rich people who enable it (e.g., Donald Trump, Alan Dershowitz, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton). I like a lot of the elements in this one and it's an absorbing and quick-paced read. It's competently done—above average, really, like all the blurbers say—so I think my quibbles about thrillers are more likely straining at genre limitations. It's just not the kind of Adam-12 police procedural that's generally my preference, but it's sober about the real world, which is also a preference. Mankell may not always be for me, in other words, but so far he's always been good at the things he does.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.