When Henning Mankell, the most famous Swedish writer since Strindberg, published the first Kurt Wallander mystery 14 years ago, he could not have imagined how successful they would be. In Sweden the series triumphed overnight; worldwide it has sold in excess of 20 million copies. British readers were slow to catch up.The Man Who Smiled is the fourth Kurt Wallander book, originally published in Sweden in 1994. It opens with a road accident in thick fog in which a solicitor crashes his car and dies.Questions of responsibility and morality, of justice and democracy are explicitly raised, which is unusual in detective fiction.Wallander, a sternly pensive slogger who eats junk food, is one of the most credible creations in contemporary crime fiction, and The Man Who Smiled is vintage Nordic storytelling.

Doch dieser mit großen plakativen Pinselstrichen angelegte Fall will nicht recht überzeugen, weil Autor Henning Mankell zwischen den Zeilen allzu stark moralisiert und in der Harderberg-Figur einen geradezu dämonisch wirkenden menschenverachtenden Kapitalisten als überdimensionales Feindbild installiert.