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My first Henning Mankell book- Mr. Mankell is famous for his Kurt Wallander series. The Man From Beijing starts with a bang; the last 18 residents of a small Swedish village, along with their family pets, are viciously murdered with what appears to be a sword. The unexpected storyline that develops from this fairly typical mystery/police procedural beginning is anything but straightforward. The police attempt to solve the crime using an Ockham's Razor technique that ignores some of the stranger
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Interesting, not quite what I was expecting. Was thinking this would be more like a finely detailed police procedural, but instead it is a character study of a country: China. The crime/thriller plot is the skeleton from which hangs a lot of rumination on the history of China, the current challenges of uneven growth and bazillions of poor peasants.
The crime plot was a little phantastical, especially the sudden ending, but it was pretty cool in its imagining of the motive. Lesson: write a diary ...more
The crime plot was a little phantastical, especially the sudden ending, but it was pretty cool in its imagining of the motive. Lesson: write a diary ...more
Oct 20, 2014
Emily Chandler
marked it as to-read
Mar 11, 2018
Terri Kinney
added it
