Published in English for the first time, Mankell’s delightful novella finds Wallander in typically dejected form
Henning Mankell’s lugubriously lonely detective Kurt Wallander is back – briefly. Originally written for a Dutch crime festival, the novella An Event in Autumn is set in 2002, just before Mankell’s final Wallander novel, The Troubled Man. Although the story was adapted by the BBC in 2012, starring Kenneth Branagh as the Swedish policeman, it has never been published in English before.
It sees Wallander living with his daughter, Linda, in central Ystad, dreaming of the countryside. As the book’s title tells us, it’s autumn, which naturally sets off the great detective’s gloom: “I shall never find a house, he thought. No house, no dog, no new woman either. Everything will remain the same as it always has been”, and other such deliciously dejected Wallanderisms: “nothing could make him as depressed as the sight of old spectacles that nobody wanted any more”.
If it weren’t enough just to be back in Wallander’s company, there’s also a crime to solve. Viewing a potential new house, he stumbles across human remains in the garden. It’s the clue to a decades-old mystery which Wallander is keen to get his teeth into; and no, he doesn’t buy the house.
This short tale is an absolute pleasure to read and worth luxuriating in. Mankell notes at the end: “There are no more stories about Kurt Wallander” and “I’m not the one who will miss him. It’s the reader.” Indeed.
An Event in Autumn - Harvill Secker - NZ$26.99
It sees Wallander living with his daughter, Linda, in central Ystad, dreaming of the countryside. As the book’s title tells us, it’s autumn, which naturally sets off the great detective’s gloom: “I shall never find a house, he thought. No house, no dog, no new woman either. Everything will remain the same as it always has been”, and other such deliciously dejected Wallanderisms: “nothing could make him as depressed as the sight of old spectacles that nobody wanted any more”.
If it weren’t enough just to be back in Wallander’s company, there’s also a crime to solve. Viewing a potential new house, he stumbles across human remains in the garden. It’s the clue to a decades-old mystery which Wallander is keen to get his teeth into; and no, he doesn’t buy the house.
This short tale is an absolute pleasure to read and worth luxuriating in. Mankell notes at the end: “There are no more stories about Kurt Wallander” and “I’m not the one who will miss him. It’s the reader.” Indeed.
An Event in Autumn - Harvill Secker - NZ$26.99
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