HENNING MANKELL: IN MEMORIAM

Henning Mankell was important as a crime writer because his Wallander books sparked what had become an explosion of Scandinavian crime fiction which went nuclear after The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and I find it hard to believe that Steig Larsson wasn't inspired in some way by The Fifth Woman one of the best of the Wallander series.

Otherwise, Mankell's influence was more in terms of marketing than style, though you can see a good bit of him in the best of the Nordic writers, Iceland's Arnaldur Indridason. But Mankell himself was influenced by the godfathers of modern Scandinavian crime fiction, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and their ten Martin Beck books. Like Beck, Wallander is a dour detective with a depressing private life, and functions within an ensemble cast that both complements and contrasts with him. Mankell spends more time on Wallander himself, perhaps, which reflects the changing times to some extent (our literary cult of fictional personality) but also reflects Sjowall and Wahloo's own influences, especially Ed McBain's 87^th Precinct.

Mankell was often dismissive of the label 'crime writer', but he was very generous to Sjowall and Wahloo, and wrote the introduction to the Harper Perennial reissue of the first Beck novel, Roseanna. When I wrote the introduction to Murder At The Savoy in the same series, I noted that its basic premise, the death of an industrial with fingers in many shady multi-national deals, is mirrored in Mankell's The Man Who Smiled (a very Martin Beck sort of title), and noted a few other parallels in the series. I also quoted the description of Beck's colleague Fredrik Melander, logical, calm, dull, with a 'modest' sense of humour, an excellent memory, and a propensity for being in the toiler whenever he was needed. As Sjowall and Wahloo wrote: 'briefly, he was a first-class policeman'. The one time I interviewed Mankell, appropriately enough at the Savoy (but in London, not Malmo) I asked if Wallander were in some ways an hommage to Melander. 'Oh, did they write that?' he replied. He also had little false modesty; I asked him who the man was who had greeted him just before we sat down. 'Oh, he's Sweden's second greatest novelist,' he said.

What also links Mankell to Sjowall and Wahloo was their dissection of the failures of Sweden's experiment in Social Democracy from a perspective often noted to be left-wing, but more accurately described as true to the ideals of that experiment. Mankell's political commitment is strong throughout his work, both in Sweden and Mozambique, and strongly consistent to a sense of rational help for those who need help and justice, and a society based on those principles. It was no surprise he chose to sail on the flotilla of ships trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza, it was even less of a surprise that he reported the summary murder of 10 activists by masked Israeli commandos, and refuted very simply and strongly allegations that the killings were self-defense. He had a field day with the fact that he was captured in international waters, brought to Israel, and then charged by the Orwellian government with entering the country illegally.

Wallander was well-served by television. Rolf Lassgard nailed his character, but Krister Henriksson was justifiably more popular, because he brought some humour to Wallender, just through his quick smile and twinkle in his eye; it made his interactions with the rest of the ensemble less confrontational. Kenneth Branagh's Wallander virtually eliminated the ensemble, concentrating on the superficial problems of Wallander's life, most notably drinking and shaving. It's good that the series has not been continued, like the Beck which for all its strengths has little of Sjowall and Wahloo left to recommend it. And it should be noted that Henriksson's performance in the final Wallander story, The Troubled Man, is every bit as touching as Mankell's own conclusion to the series (and it's one of the most overtly political of the series as well).

There isn't much humour in the books; Mankell wrote a comic novel, Tea Bag, about literary types and immigration—the humane portion about the life of immigrants in Sweden works muich better than the literary comedy. But his work for children is surprisingly good, including Chronicler Of The Winds, an adult story based on a play written to be performed in Portugese, in his adopted Maputo.

Faceless Killers, the first Wallander book, is a good place to start. One Step Behind and Fifth Woman are my idea of the series' best. I'd also recommend his 2006 novel Depths, (you can read my review of that book here), set on bleak islands in the archipelago during World War I; it is to my mind the most Bergmanesque bit of Swedish writing I've encountered (reminiscent of Strindberg as well) and deeply moving. Of course Mankell was married to Eva Bergman, Ingmar's daughter, which may or may not mean anything.

We discuss Mankell in the second episode of The Crime Vault Live; I could not do the same on BBC Front Row that night because we were recording CVL at the same time. I might have said that sometime in the future people will look at Mankell as a transitory figure, between the trail-blazing of Sjowall and Wahloo and the worldwide phenomenon of Steig Larsson. But he's more important than that, and the consistency of his vision for both his iconic character, his other work, and beyond fiction to his country and the world; in many ways he represents the moral focus of the Swedish character. This should make him a major figure no matter from what distance literary critics are looking back.

HENNING MANKELL'S DEPTHS

Reading Depths feels sometimes like watching a silent movie, perhaps directed by Ingmar Bergman. I kept having images of John Gilbert crossing an ice flow to get to Greta Garbo alone on an island. It's not just the wintery setting, but the very much 19th century sensibility, one beginnign to be affected by the onslaught of the 20th. World War I has often been seen as the end of that era, as the old Europe destroyed itself with a lemming-like determination. But it's the outside world that is at war, though its signs can be heard across the Baltic. Neutral Sweden is concerned with its own position, which is why Lars Tobiasson-Svartman is assigned to take depth soundings in the archipelago, to find channels which only the Swedes will be able to follow. Lars is very much concerned with precision, with measuring, as if human life could be mastered if everything is kept in proportions he can understand.

This is very much the traditional Swedish attitude, of practicality above all else, and it went hand in hand with the emotional reserve that went with a very formal, class structured society, and maintained itself as that society became more egalitarian, at least on the surface.

Lars is married to Kristina Tacker, daughter of a powerful industrialist, and he is happy within the confines of marriage as he understands it. But happiness isn't something that he can measure, and satisfaction comes only from things he can. Or so he believes. But while on the ship exploring the waters of the archipelago, Lars comes across Sara, a woman living alone on a small desolate island, scrabbling a life off fish and a small garden since her husband died in a storm, and in that sense of freedom from the strictures of society, responsibility, and yes, measurement, incredibly alluring to Lars.

Lars slowly becomes obsessed with Sara, an obsession which only strengthens after she takes in and hides a German sailor who has deserted from the battles in the Baltic. From this point we follow Lars' transformation into a creature of the wild, while Sara's only desire to is escape back to Swedish civilisation.

One of Mankell's prime concerns is the way people enttusted with responsibility by society abuse the trust placed in them; Lars is not the only character who follows that path in this novel, as he encounters others who avoid their duties along the way. As Lars tries to manipulate what is a very tightly structured system, the result is almost inevitably violent, and the connection to Mankell's crime novels on that level is obvious (though Svartman is also the name of one of the Ystad uniform cops). But this is not a crime novel, it is a study in mood, in tension, in frustration, written in the kind of bare poetry we might associate with Swedish poetry, perhaps Gunnar Ekelof or at times even Tomas Transtromer. The mood is captured precisely, which is why those silent images came through so powerfully to me, but the story is told with such prrecision one could almost see the precision--and perhaps the casting as well; Sara is a role many actresses would die for.

Depths is a powerful book, and one which captures more fully the sense of depression which people often note in the Wallander series, because it lays out the deep roots of the Swedish psyche, and in delving that deeply, creates a drama that becomes universal, and perhaps even timeless.