Patrick Sherriff's Blog

This was the last Kurt Wallander mystery that Mankell published in English before his death (in 2015). As a novella of 150 pages or so it works really well, although maybe that’s because I’ve read all the other doorstoppers in the series, I didn’t need backstories. The 20-page essay Mankell wrote on Wallander, included at the end of the book, was fascinating too. Mankell explains how he came up with the character of Wallander as a vehicle to explore the changing nature of Sweden in the 90s and 2000s, but was pleasantly surprised his struggles resonated with so many around the world. And they still do to me.

No. 11 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

I read this while waiting for the last Kurt Wallander mystery to arrive in the post, so it may not have been fair to compare the two northern European detectives, the middle-aged, depressed Swedish Wallander and the wise-cracking action hero Bernie Gunther of the Berlin police. The difference being that Gunther was trying to find justice in Nazi Germany, not small town contemporary Sweden. While Wallander is all too believable, Gunther is more obviously a piece of fiction, at least I thought so, with the premise of a locked room murder mystery and a mansion full of Nazis in which our hero must try to extract some form of justice (it’s not only the readers who see the irony in trying to find justice for the killing of a murderous Nazi scumbag). Still, it was a good read and the eighth in the series. I’ve only read the first, March Violets, so I have some catching up to do.

No. 10 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

This is a hip and gory crime-yarn that takes tropes from samurai stories (extreme loyalty to the clan leader, an injustice done by a higher-up) sets them in a yakuza gang compound and then makes the hero a tough woman fighter who falls for the boss’s daughter, which is enough of a gender bender modern twist to turn an otherwise traditional tale on its head. Fast moving, although the passage of a couple of decades at the turn of a page left me confused. Still, an enjoyable read.

No. 9 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

So that’s it, then? The last Mankell novel featuring his demorilised Swedish everyman-detective Kurt Wallander. Our hero has turned 60 and is the last-but-one left standing of his original police squad that, like the Sweden he inhabits, he barely recognises. Then there are the worrying bouts of memory loss afflicting him. Still, he has just enough piss and vinegar left to get to the bottom of a Cold War cold case that suddenly heats up as an old ex-Navy man disappears who is Wallander’s daughter’s partner’s father. Convoluted? Kinda. This time it’s personal? You could say that. In fact, that’s one reason I’m so enamoured with the Wallander mysteries, Wallander with his Alzheimer-addled father, headstrong daughter Linda and love interests ex-wife Mona and ex-lover Baiba, seems to jump (unwillingly) off the page as more real than reality. So, yes I’m saddened that this will be the last Wallander novel I’ll ever read — but I was releaved to discover there’s one more Wallander novella, An Event in Autumn, that Mankell published 2014, the year before his death. It’s on it’s way from a Reno used-bookstore as I type this, so I can at least look forward to one more final, last Wallander adventure. A sad pleasure, I hope.

No. 8 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

In previous reviews of Mankell’s Inspector Wallander’s novels, I was sniffy about his habit of writing 500+ pages to weave his yarns of big-city crime in small-town Sweden. But I’d like to ammend my previous statement. I really enjoyed the gentle unravelling of the murderer’s conspiracy, mixed in with subplots of vigilante justice, official injustice, and everything else you need to fill 500 pages. I actually found myself in tears at one point, over Wallander’s alzheimer-suffering father, and my wife tells me I gaffawed a couple of times, though I don’t now remember what I could have found amusing in the pusruit of a serial killer who delighted in making the victims suffer. Makes me want to write that Japan police procedural I’ve long shelved as too ambitious to pull off. Maybe the time is right.

No. 7 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

This is five short stories that flesh out the biography of fictional Swedish small town detective Kurt Wallander. Wallander’s First Case introduces us to his first boss, Hemberg, his first brush with death, and his first wife, Mona. The Man with the Mask introduces Mankell’s interest in immigration and integration (or lack of it) in Sweden, The Man on the Beach shows us Wallander’s ability to pull together strands of people’s lives going back in time to solve a contemporary murder, The Death of the Photographer shows that even the victims are not so innocent and The Pyramid which feels like it could have been a novel, but for the slightly unsatisfying ending. But all are worth reading especially as Rydberg, Wallander’s often-referred-to-mentor, is still alive in these tales. Includes an interesting foreword by Mankell in which he explains much of his interest in the series was in showing the decline of the welfare state and subsequent rise of anti-social forces in Sweden.

No. 6 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

The premise for this novel was so good I had to buy it right there on the Heathrow bookshop table, heaving with more accessible novels. Here’s the blurb I read: “You go into a booksop and buy If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You like it. But there’s a printer’s error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different book again…” Calvino drops you, the reader, in this mess and constantly throws you into different, ever more gripping opening chapters of different novels, but something happens and you begin to see recurring characters, although their identities are hidden, and things keep getting stranger, until it all comes together in the end. I enjoyed the novel but felt it was making literary points above my pay grade, and in the end I was left thinking “so what?” Interesting, but I think I would have prererred Vonnegut to have taken the premise and run with it. So it goes.

No. 5 of 50 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

This is the centenary audio edition of this very short business book (it took less than an hour to listen all the way through, even including the final chapter written promoting advertising services by “marketing expert Sam Waterfall” who clearly bought the rights to the Obvious Adams name. Still, I took a few ideas from the book — that with analysis and thought you can discover obvious things that are easy to overlook.

The real Obvious Adams, if there was such a man, made his name finding obvious points overlooked by fancier, smarter ad copy writers. He improved a peach campaign by stressing the peaches went from tree to table in six hours. He improved a cake promotion by making the packages more cake-like and offering samples to customers. He imporved the fortunes of a hat-maker by making sure their ads focussed on the pictures of the hat, not the hat on a model’s body. He promoted a paper manufacturer by stressing things the manufacturer did that all producers did (hand checking products, for example) but folks didn’t know, with a key observation that it didn’t matter that people in the business know what was commonplace, it’s what the customers know (or not) that counts.

Obvious stuff, but still valuable.

No. 4 of 50 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

Whatever your opinions of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I think everyone can benefit from the occasional exhortation to “Shut your mouth, open your mind” and “Work your ass off”. Now, imagine those as chapter headings pronounced in the Germanic gutteral English of the former Mr Universe and governor of California, and you can see why I recommend anyone needing a little pep talk to download the audiobook and listen to Arnold pump some metaphorical iron.

The seven items of advice are the seven chapters:

Have a clear visionNever think smallWork your ass offSell, sell, sellShift gears (rethink your priorities)Shut your mouth and open your mindBreak your mirrors (think of others, not yourself)

Arnold comes across as not the conceited ass of his early years, but an elder gentleman at peace with a flawed world and his place in it.

No. 3 of 50 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t really get what was going on here, other than to say it was a (maybe?) semi-autobiographical dreamlike novella in which the Italian narrator goes though Portugal meeting up with real and fictional literary characters and eating Portuguese dishes. But even though I didn’t really get it, I enjoyed the hallucination, excellently written and translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa.

No. 2 of 50 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.