FACELESS KILLERS
Henning Mankell
Who would so savagely kill an elderly farming couple in the Swedish town of Lenarp—the husband gruesomely tortured, the wife slowly strangled with a noose tied in an unusual knot—and then step out to the couple's barn to feed their horse? Inspector Kurt Wallander, battling midlife crisis—his estranged daughter has rarely called him since she lit out from home; his estranged wife greets him by telling him how much weight he's put on—would love to have the leisure to speculate about the identity of the killers, described only by the dying Maria Lîvgren as foreign. As acting chief of the Ystad police, though, he's got more urgent business on his hands: a series of xenophobic phone calls (You now have three days to make up for shielding foreign criminals. . . . Or else we'll take over) from somebody who's willing to set fire to a refugee camp barracks and gun down a visiting Somali to show how serious he is. Surprised by the news that Johannes Lîvgren was not exactly the colorless chap he appeared, Wallander despairs of finding enough time or energy to kindle a romance with deputy D.A. Anette Brolin, who's married to boot. But how long will it take his plunge into ethnic hatred to give him the answers he needs? Though the last thing Kurt Wallander felt like was a laughing policeman, fans of Maj Sjîwall and Per Wahlîî will feel right at home in this first (1991) of Mankell's five Wallander novels, right down to the laconic paragraphing. Readers who think of Sweden as snow-white are in for a surprise.
https://d1fd687oe6a92y.cloudfront.net/img/kir_images/header/apple-icon.png
Kirkus Reviews
Who would so savagely kill an elderly farming couple in the Swedish town of Lenarp—the husband gruesomely tortured, the wife slowly strangled with a noose tied in an unusual knot—and then step out to the couple's barn to feed their horse? Inspector Kurt Wallander, battling midlife crisis—his estranged daughter has rarely called him since she lit out from home; his estranged wife greets him by telling him how much weight he's put on—would love to have the leisure to speculate about the identity of the killers, described only by the dying Maria Lîvgren as "foreign." As acting chief of the Ystad police, though, he's got more urgent business on his hands: a series of xenophobic phone calls ("You now have three days to make up for shielding foreign criminals. . . . Or else we'll take over") from somebody who's willing to set fire to a refugee camp barracks and gun down a visiting Somali to show how serious he is. Surprised by the news that Johannes Lîvgren was not exactly the colorless chap he appeared, Wallander despairs of finding enough time or energy to kindle a romance with deputy D.A. Anette Brolin, who's married to boot. But how long will it take his plunge into ethnic hatred to give him the answers he needs? Though "the last thing Kurt Wallander felt like was a laughing policeman," fans of Maj Sjîwall and Per Wahlîî will feel right at home in this first (1991) of Mankell's five Wallander novels, right down to the laconic paragraphing. Readers who think of Sweden as snow-white are in for a surprise.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.