The Man from Beijing
- ISBN13: 9780307271860
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
The acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, writing at the height of his powers, now gives us an electrifying stand-alone global thriller.
January 2006. In the Swedish hamlet of Hesjövallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene.
Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: Her grandparents, the Andréns, are among the victims, and Birgitta soon learns that an Andrén family in N… More >>
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Stephanie DePue said :
February 22, 2010 at 6:51 pm
“The Man from Beijing” is a standalone thriller from Swedish author Henning Mankell, who has achieved international best sellerdom with his Kurt Wallander mysteries, police procedurals that include Sidetracked and The White Lioness. He has also published several standalones. His novels have been translated into forty languages, sold thirty million copies worldwide, and have consistently topped the best seller lists in Europe. The Wallander detective series has also been made into a Swedish television series, and now an English-language television series, Wallander: Sidetracked / Firewall / One Step Behind, starring Kenneth Branagh that has recently been shown on Public Broadcasting System stations in the United States and is available for purchase. Mankell divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where he has served as the director of Teatro Avenida since 1985. He has won the German Tolerance Prize, the Glass Key Award, and the United Kingdom’s Golden Dagger Award, and been nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize three times.
“The Man” has been a best seller wherever it’s been published so far: Sweden (ten weeks on the best seller list); Norway, Denmark, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. It opens in January 2006, with the brutal murder of nineteen people – and their pets–in the tiny, isolated, snowbound hamlet of Hesjovallen, with the only clue being a red ribbon, found at the scene. It features two women as detectives: Vivi Sundberg of the local police force, and a judge located nearby, Birgitta Roslin, who realizes the murders touch her family. From there, it will somehow swoop back more than 150 years to the building of the railroads in the American West; then onto Beijing, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and London.
We are undoubtedly in a moment when Swedish detective tales are hot, hot, hot: the late Stieg Larsson for one, with his The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage), etc., a book that is somewhat overloaded with that author’s left wing political views, as is Henning’s “The Man,” if you ask me. Anyway, I have historically been fond of Scandinavian mysteries; in the 1970s, I read every book by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, about Martin Beck, Stockholm police detective, such as The Laughing Policeman (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard), made into a movie of the same name (The Laughing Policeman) starring Walter Matthau. (Although, then there was “Smilla’s Sense of Snow,” novel by Peter Hoeg, and movie of the same name, that surely featured one of the most absurd macguffins, as Alfred Hitchcock named them, of all time.) Anyway, as I would be the first to say, I was eagerly anticipating getting and reading the Mankell. Was in seventh heaven with the opening – I’ve often told friends that if a mystery doesn’t throw up at least one body in the first ten pages, I won’t read further. And here were nineteen!! But the plot is unbelievably far-fetched, even more so than in some of Mankell’s other works, judging from what I saw on TV. And more than that, the author rather soon lets us know the person who’s responsible for the crimes, and why. Then he’s off on his round the world tergiversations.
Now, I am more interested in China than most, as my mother was a Sinophile who actually believed that the 72-year old Chairman Mao swam upstream against the 12 knot Yalu River. But Mankell seems to expect us to read through what he describes as a five-hour speech on China’s future. Seems to me, books on China are on quite another shelf at libraries and bookstores, not with the mysteries. And, whereas I’m curious about what China is going to do with an aging population and the missing 24 million women they so callously encouraged to be aborted, or exposed to death as infants, to meet their one child per family standard, Mankell doesn’t even touch on those problems. Which I would look elsewhere to read up on. Sorry, no can do. Can’t recommend this book to mystery lovers.
Rating: 2 / 5
Patricia Bloom said :
February 22, 2010 at 7:41 pm
I found the extremely long tedious chapters on China overdone gratuitous and clumsy not well integrated into the main plot which gets lost in detailed exposition of Chinas political history. Due to these structural flaws I lost way and gave up. Much checking back and forth to locate the twist and or turn in plot but to no avail. I gave up. In the past Mankell books I have run into slow parts usually due tothe writers reflective ruminative nature but this detailed history set off by itself was a barrier I was unable to cross.
Rating: 1 / 5
B. Gone said :
February 22, 2010 at 9:41 pm
As a fan of Mankell’s Wallander series, this book seemed like an interesting step off the beaten track. Whereas the build up of the story is solid and the change of venue takes the reader beyond the at many a time gloomy Scandinavian mindscape, the wrap up of the story fell short of the author’s usual standards.
Rating: 3 / 5
Daffy Du said :
February 22, 2010 at 10:29 pm
I discovered Henning Mankell a few years ago and have been a big fan of Scandinavian crime novels ever since, even though I don’t really read any other kind of mystery. His Kurt Wallander books are my absolute favorites. So naturally, I jumped when I saw this book available through the Vine program.
“The Man from Beijing” hopscotches from Sweden to China to America to Africa, with an ambitiously plotted story triggered by a mass murder in a small village in Sweden; every resident, all but one of whom is elderly, is brutally butchered. Because judge Birgitta Roslin learns one of the couples had been her mother’s foster parents, she travels to the village to see what she can discover. Naturally, the police aren’t interested in the rather farfetched lead she turns up because they’ve already pinned the crime on someone who’s confessed.
From there, the storyline travels back in time to 19th century China and then America, where a character works on the railroad under inhumane conditions, then back to modern-day China, where Birgitta travels with a friend, then to Africa and back to Europe. Despite all the travel, temporal and geographic, it’s easy enough to follow, and it’s a fast-paced read, with sufficient suspense and adequate development of the usual flawed characters we’ve come to expect from Mankell. In particular, the section set in modern China is taut and compelling. But there are some fairly implausible coincidences and connections, and Mankell has loaded the book down with some rather preachy, pedantic passages about history, economics, etc. that go on too long and as a result, seem more like digressions than necessary background information to advance the plot. By the time I was about 150 pages from the end, I was antsy for the book to end, peeking ahead because the destination had become more interesting than the journey.
If you like Kurt Wallander, you’ll probably like this. Just don’t expect it to be, well, Wallander. Four stars because it’s Mankell (who’s always a real pro), it’s interesting, and it’s well-written. One star deducted for the somewhat self-indulgent history lessons and the leaps of faith required for some of the plotting.
Rating: 4 / 5
Elliott said :
February 23, 2010 at 1:13 am
My only previous Henning Mankell book is The Man Who Smiled, which I would easily rank above The Man from Beijing. The Man from Beijing has a lot more detail. The plot is far more complex than in Smiled. But Beijing simply has too much detail and the story lines are just too complicated. And there’s much that seems extraneous, particularly the concluding bit that takes place in London’s Chinatown.
However, those who can accept a spectacular series of coincidences might enjoy this book. Also, readers might enjoy this novel if they can maintain their focus as the story shifts between diverse locales and time frames. Large segments are devoted to 1860′s China and Nevada, as well as present-day Sweden, Beijing, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and London.
There are fascinating treatments of the suffering endured by peasants in China in the mid nineteenth century, and the kidnapping and virtual enslavement of Chinese men who were forced across the Pacific to work on western railroads in the U.S. during the 1860′s. There’s also a very insightful look at the modern struggle between the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese businessmen who want to move China further toward a wide-open capitalist economy than it already is today. One wonders what would happen if the far-fetched scheme involving China and Africa that Mankell suggests in the novel actually played out.
The central figure is Brigitta Roslin, a Swedish district judge. She has ties to a remote Swedish hamlet where, one January night in 2006, eighteen elderly residents and a young boy were brutally murdered. On her own, Roslin investigates this massacre. She is shrewd and resourceful. She interacts with the local Swedish police, who, for the most part, do not take her seriously. Mankell brilliantly develops Roslin’s character. And I’ll never forget the particularly diabolical manner in which a particularly diabolical man plots to murder her. How does all of this lead far across space and time? You’ll have to crack the book to find out.
I had no trouble finishing this book. Much of it was mesmerizing. But there was a significant amount of fluff and confusion. All in all, I would say it’s a case of more is less.
Rating: 3 / 5