OK, I’m bending the rules a little with this one, as “Herge” was a pen-name and not the artist’s real name (but then I employed similar chicanery for Theo van Doesburg and nobody has yet complained!). Some might also argue that Herge is not an artist in quite the same sense that almost all of the others in this list have been and will be, but I have no doubts about his inclusion.
Herge, and more specifically Tintin, were a huge part of my childhood. I read the books over and over again, and even as an older teenager/twenty-something, once I had disposable income I (re)built my collection of Tintin albums.
What I loved most about his work was the way he placed non-realistic-looking characters in incredibly detailed and accurate scenes. It didn’t take me long to find the following examples (and there could have been many, many more…!). The detail in the ships’ rigging and the way he has described the surface of the ground in the first picture are sources of endless delight for me.
The details of the undergrowth and the texture of the tree bark in this picture above, or the perfect shadows in the image below, from ‘Explorers on the Moon’, are more wonderful examples of Herge’s artistic brilliance.
Given that he is working in a ligne claire style it is testament to his ability to pick out just the right level of detail to make the world his characters inhabit look so realistic. Despite the fact that it is populated with cartoon characters with the usual exaggerated features, I still feel I could step into the frame and really feel the moon dust crunch under my feet, or the weight of those drooping leaves as I brushed through the jungle.
While an unexpected inclusion perhaps, Herge has been one of my favourite artists for most of my life and will remain so for a long time. I spent many happy hours of my childhood copying images from his Tintin books and even now I am occasionally inspired to pick up my pencil and sketchbook after looking at his creations.
‘Sidetracked’ sees Wallander chasing a serial killer who attacks his victims with an axe and takes their scalps. The killer turns out to be a disturbed teenager who has a split personality and is exacting his revenge on the wealthy men who abused his sister. The novel’s themes – the impunity of the rich, people trafficking – are not unusual in crime fiction (though this may be one of the earlier examples) and while generally well done this novel is a little unsatisfying. The alternative personality for the killer feels weak and contrived to me and breaks me out of the immersion into the story. It also marks the beginning of a series of longer novels and as such drags a little.
Following that is ‘One Step Behind’, part of the original BBC series, and one of the better books. Again, it could be described as a little too long, but this time the book feels to be of a higher quality. Once again there is a serial killer and some of the scenarios feel contrived again (for example, the upper-class teenagers who decide to communicate only by post).
Next up is ‘Firewall’, a book about cyber-terrorism in sleepy Ystad. This is one of the better books too and its biggest flaw is that its subject matter means it rapidly dated. Probably the redeeming feature of this subject is that technology moves so fast that it won’t be long before reading about this sort of cyber crime will feel similar to reading the detective stories set before mobile phones or modern forensic science.
Following ‘Firewall’ comes ‘The Pyramid’, a collection of short stories which are set before ‘Faceless Killers’ and are supposed to flesh out the background of Wallander the man and policeman and give us a better idea of the middle aged detective we first meet in 1992. This collection is one of the very best that Henning Mankell wrote and I remember it very fondly. This is one of my favourite Wallander books of the whole series.
At this point, the series diverts briefly for a novel with Wallander’s daughter, Linda, as the main character. This is ‘Before the Frost’, and is one where I feel the series dips again. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the quality of the writing, but I’m always a little uncomfortable with detective stories about religious lunatics, which this one is. I find them unsettling in a way that prevents me from enjoying them in the slightest.
Then comes a short story, only recently translated into English. ‘An Event in Autumn’ details Wallander’s attempts to buy a house, only to discover a body in the garden and his subsequent investigation into the identity of the corpse. Despite being a novella, this is a very good novel and is another of my favourites. It sounds a backhanded compliment, but I think that the recurring theme with the Wallander novels is that the shorter they are, the better they are. When he writes the longer novels, as the middle few are, the quality can’t be sustained over the greater length.
The final novel is ‘The Troubled Man’ and arguably the best of the lot. In this story Wallander is investigating the disappearance of his daughter’s father-in-law and the story feels much more personal as a result. Wallander seems older, gentler and wiser than in some of the earlier books, as if grandfatherhood is mellowing him. The story manages to blend Swedish history, a bit of political intrigue and some very affecting personal storylines much more smoothly than any of the preceding novels. 
First up is Faceless Killers. This is our introduction to Wallander and takes place in early January, 1991. An old couple are murdered in their farmhouse and the old lady’s dying words implicate foreigners. Cue racist attacks on immigrant camps, a bit of media hysteria and some solid Scandinavian detective work. There’s also a discussion on Sweden’s immigration policy which plays out in the relatively safe confines of the mind of Kurt Wallander; all together you have a nice debut for the character.
It starts with the discovery of two dead bodies in a life raft. They turn out to be Latvian, so a Latvian detective visits Sweden for a few days to help invevstigate. He doesn’t say much, and promptly returns to Riga, where he is almost instantly murdered. Wallander then flies to Riga because someone has had the idea that he might somehow be able to help the local police solve the murder of his Latvian counterpart. While there he meets the grieving widow (promptly falling hopelessly in love with her) and becomes involved in some sort of anti-communist resistance movement. After returning to Sweden he is smuggled back into Latvia where he runs around a lot before sneaking into police headquarters, pooing in a bin (no, really) and escaping with the vital evidence that proves Colonel Leipa’s murder was an inside job. He’s then cornered on a rooftop and narrowly escapes being shot by any one of a number of corrupt Latvian policemen before being saved by the other main suspect in a twist that is probably visible from space. Needless to say, this is the weakest of the novels. If memory serves, Henning Mankell admits in the afterword that he wanted to write about the struggles of countries emerging from the collapsing Soviet Union and so this seems to be a case of a book being stretched around a vague idea and not benefitting from the experience.
The third novel, The White Lioness, is something of a step up. The story here concerns a plot to assassinate a prominent anti-apartheid politician in South Africa which starts to unravel when an innocent Swedish lady is in the wrong place at the wrong time and is ‘silenced’. It still has its moments of unrealism (if such a thing exists) and it still feels as though the story is a vehicle for a political point that Henning Mankell is keen to get across. My biggest problem with this book was actually the amount of time spent away from Wallander, Sweden and the murder investigation and with some unpleasant white supremacists in South Africa. The other problem I had was that many of the characters (particularly those in the South African settings) seemed very one-dimensional. They were either the aforementioned white supremacists, brave and humble, spirit-unbroken black civilians or the couple of less appealing black characters were portrayed as being so damaged and corrupted by their environment that one couldn’t help but feel sympathy.
The final of the first four is The Man Who Smiled, which avoids many of the pitfalls of the previous three. For a start, it is based entirely in Skane and spends almost all of its time concerned with the investigation. Again, the theme here seems (to me) to be fairly transparent. Mankell is writing about how big business and those that lead high-profile international companies are virtually immune from legal restrictions.The book is pretty chunky and as with The White Lioness there were times when I thought a careful prune of the text would not have done it any harm. It also suffers from an unrealistic ending as Wallander (paunchy, late-forty-something, small-town policeman) morphs into resourceful action hero to break the case.
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