Wallander's first case
Wallander's first case (original title: Pyramiden ) is a collection of various short stories about Henning Mankell's novel commissioner Kurt Wallander . The book was first published in Swedish in 1999 , and in German in 2002 .
According to Mankell's own statement, the five short stories, which, from Wallander's first few weeks as a patrolman until shortly before the events of the first Wallander novel, play Murderer Without a Face , serve to give the reader the opportunity to delve deeper into the character of Kurt Wallander and his biography to complete. Furthermore, events and occurrences that are only mentioned in passing in the novels are described in more detail. These include, among other things, Wallander's falling out with his father and the failed marriage with Mona.
content
Wallander's first case
This story begins with the young Kurt Wallander as a simple law enforcement officer in Malmö in 1969. Wallander hates the patrol duty and wants to switch to the criminal police as soon as possible. When his neighbor commits suicide under mysterious circumstances, Wallander begins to investigate on his own and can ultimately provide the decisive impetus for clarification. Although, in his inexperience, he repeatedly put himself in danger and ignored all warnings from his superiors never to investigate privately, Wallander was able to prove his skills and thus recommend himself to the police. At the end of the narrative he is attacked with a knife and barely survives. This formative event also comes up again and again in the later novels. Wallander's family circumstances also become visible here (especially his tense relationship with his father, who never wanted to accept his son's choice of career).
The man in the mask
In the second short story in this collection, Wallander comes under the control of a black African cash robber whom the patrol officer runs into on his way home in a grocery store on Christmas Eve after his future homicide boss commissioned him to report a robbery in this shop to pursue. Wallander finally succeeds in overpowering the criminal, but cannot prevent his suicide.
The man on the beach
Finally with the criminal investigation department, Kurt Wallander is investigating the case of a dead taxi passenger who, according to the driver, was still very healthy when he got in, but was found dead a quarter of an hour later.
The death of the photographer
In April 1988, the fifty-six year old photographer Simon Lamberg was killed in his studio in Ystad. Hilda Waldén, who has been cleaning him three times a week for twelve and a half years, finds his body. Apparently it is not a robbery, but no other motive for murder can be identified at first. The widow, Elisabeth Lamberg, lived with her husband until the end, but the two had gone their own way for years. Her daughter Matilda, who was born severely disabled, has lived in a nursing home outside Rydsgård since 1968 - when she was four.
The pyramid
In December 1989, two incidents occurred in a very short space of time near Ystad that were initially assessed as accidents: a small-engine airplane crashed into a field and a handicraft shop burned down completely. The pilots and the two owners of the store are killed. Detective Commissioner Kurt Wallander soon realizes that the incidents are by no means accidents. After the murder of an alleged drug dealer, he even recognizes a connection between the two cases, so that he finally gets on the track of an international drug dealer ring and thus himself is in mortal danger. In the middle of the difficult investigation, Wallander has to fly to Cairo to get his father out of prison. Despite the prohibition, he tried to climb the Great Pyramid. The story ends with the beginning of the novel The Faceless Murderer .
Outsourcing
In July 2004 the short story Die Pyramid , which in Wallander's first case comprised 159 pages, was published as an independent book in dtv large print ( ISBN 3-423-25216-2 ).
The following year, The Death of the Photographer was also published as a large print ( ISBN 3-423-25254-5 ).
Reviews
In the press and among readers, the book met with different reactions after its publication: For some it was a Mankell who had the usual class, for others a superfluous work, which is also told lengthy and the biography of Kurt Wallander the announcement of the author that little could illuminate.
- “An absolute must for all fans of exciting and more entertaining literature!” - Cosmopolitan
- “What amazes me is the readers' curiosity about Wallander's past life, as if he really existed, as if it were perfectly all right that his biography was written. This thirst for knowledge can be taken as a measure of the degree to which Wallander has captured a place in the readers' senses. It is of course based on the way Henning Mankell writes. ”- Monika Tunbäck-Hansson, Göteborgs-Posten
- "It's good that it's over!" (Rating: 43%) - Krimi-Couch.de