Reviews for The Man Who Smiled

The average rating for The Man Who Smiled based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-01-14 00:00:00 Roby John Our main character is a Swedish detective who is “lost.” He’s on leave suffering from deep depression from having to justifiably kill a man. He’s also disgusted with the increasing bureaucracy of the system and dislikes the new ways displacing the old. He fears the administrative bloat of the system and envisions a day when all the administrators, former police officers, will simply pass paper to each in their offices. Yet he is supportive of a woman detective who is put down in various ways by most of the other men. We pretty much know from the start who the bad guy is: a big-time financier and jet-setter who controls a mega-million international corporation. The bad guy lives in a McCastle within an electronically guarded compound in the countryside. Part of the mystery is figuring out exactly what kind of scam he has going. The detective knows his thugs are responsible for the three murders, (two “accidents” and a “suicide”), as well as a failed car bomb and land mine attack. He decides not to resign from the force only when an acquaintance of his is one of those killed. He comes back to police work with a vengeance. This police procedural is an easy and engaging read. This is one of several books with the same character known as the Kurt Wallender series. You can’t get lost in the meticulously constructed plot. The story is told from the POV of the main character and he mentally reviews, or reviews at daily meetings and with his partner, where we are in the investigation. He even fills us in on dates and times. And maybe at times it’s TOO much – in one paragraph we learn he was back at the police station just after 1:00; at 4:00 he went to the prosecutor’s office; he did not leave until 10:00 and he was home by 11:00! A line I liked: “It’s always easier to maintain a cleverly constructed lie than it is to find an unclear truth.” We get some local color of Ystad of the south coast of Sweden, a real town, along with a map of the city center and a map of the outlying district so we can follow the action. photos of Ystad: top from prettywildworld.com; bottom from marinas.com

Review # 2 was written on 2017-04-14 00:00:00 Leo Duartet The opening of the fourth novel in this series finds Kurt Wallander in a deep depression. At the conclusion of the last book, he shot a man to death, and even though it was clearly a case of self-defense, he's devastated by the fact that he has taken another man's life. After brooding over the incident for more than a year, Wallander resolves to quit the police force and is at the point of turning in his papers when a very bizarre case grabs his attention. An elderly lawyer has died. The reader knows right away that the man was murdered, but the murder is successfully disguised as an auto accident and fools the initial investigation. The man's son, also a lawyer, makes a clandestine visit to Kurt Wallander, who is still recovering, and tries to convince him to investigate his father's death. Wallander refuses and presses ahead with his intention to resign. But then the son is murdered and Wallander determines to investigate. He returns to the force, and quickly proves that the father's death was a homicide and not accident. But trying to identify the killer will take all of Wallander's considerable skills--that is, if he survives that long. This is another very good entry in the series. The characters are fully developed; the plot is engaging, and the police investigation seems very realistic. Fans of the series will enjoy it and it should appeal to any fan of Scandinavian crime fiction. Kurt Wallander is the polar opposite of someone like Lucas Davenport who could easily kill a couple of bad guys before breakfast and not worry about it any longer than lunch. He's the prototypical Scandinavian detective--introspective, depressed, and relatively humorless, which makes him an occasionally nice change of pace from his American counterparts.