The Man from Beijing
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- ISBN13: 9780307271860
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
The acclaimed leader 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 establish 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 tree in Nevada has also been murdered. She then discovers the nineteenth-century diary of an Andrén ancestor—a gang master on the American transcontinental railway—that describes brutal treatment of Chinese slave workers. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the Hesjövallen murders, but Birgitta is determined to uncover what she now suspects is a more intricate truth.
The investigation leads to the highest echelons of power in present-day Beijing, and to Zimbabwe and Mozambique. But the narrative also takes us back 150 years into the depths of the slave trade between China and the United States—a history that will ensnare Birgitta as she draws ever closer to solving the Hesjövallen murders.
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In many ways this is not the usual thriller – or for that matter the usual crime tale. Rather it reads like an brilliant novel with well drawn, believable characters whom, as the book plays out one can identify with and even care about. At times the writing is even poetic. Yes there are thrills a plenty and danger can unexpectedly smash across the scene, as it does in real life but it is the might of the characterizations and the beauty of the writing which kept me transfixed so that the books weaknesses as a thriller didn’t really matter. These weaknesses? Two primarily. The villain of the tale is not as well drawn as its heroins and, at the novel’s end all the pieces (as in real life) do not all fall into place – most but not all. All in all Henning Mankell has made memorable achievement. It is excellent enough that I was sorry for it to end.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This novel is the type of intriguing novel you want while on trip, on a plane, or sitting in front of a fire or by a pool. It really keeps you turning the pages and interested in the characters and plot development. Three people in my family tree read it, including me, and loved it. A middle age judge has lost her way. She is depressed, having health problems and her marriage has turned stagnant. She becomes intrigued about the mass murder of the residents of a remote Swedish village that she has a distant relationship to through her mother. She fights Swedish bureaucracy, which she is very familiar with as a judge, to investigate this atrocity. She does better police work than the detectives themselves and comes up with a suspect. When an ancient college friend invites her to accompany her on a trip to China where the suspect lives, she goes. She is brought back to her idealism as a college student when she rallied behind Marxism and Chairman Mao. Her tale isn’t the only one being told in the book as it weaves the tale of 19th century Chinese brothers brought against their will to work on the American railroad and one of their later day descendants. The weaving of these additional plots is done very well and isn’t forward in the tale. It all relates to the later day quest by the judge to find the murderer. The reader is stirred across the European continent, China, America and Africa with expertise and past facts and fiction blended together. Only an brilliant writer like Henning Mankell could do this. You not only delight in the tale but the writer’s skill as well when you read this book. It is with fantastic satisfaction that the judge finds her way back to health, pleased marriage, and a solved mystery that has spanned generations and continents.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
In this keenly anticipated novel, there are all sorts of treats in store for the avid mystery reader: horrendous crimes, dull-witted police officers, inexplicable happenings in exotic places, charming idealists and a strangely obsessed villain. But for me, the fantastic fun of the novel is the heroine.
Birgitta Roslin is a middle-aged Swedish judge with an undersexed spouse, grown children – and high blood pressure. Reputed to be a “mild but firm judge,” she puts in long hours preparing her judgments. She’s not fanciful, aside from a carefully concealed desire to write pop songs. Yet she’s about to be plunged into unbelievable and possibly fatal adventures.
It all starts with a mass murder in a remote Swedish village, bodies in every house. Nineteen people are dead. Even their pets have been slaughtered.
When the names of the victims are unrestricted, Birgitta realizes that her mother grew up in that village, the foster child of one of the ancient couples. Her status as “a relative” gives her some access to the police, and she starts digging into the mystery. Birgitta turns out to be a far more daring and intelligent investigator than the cops, opening herself up to serious distress.
The action spans multiple countries – Sweden, China, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and England. The Swedish massacre takes place in the larger context of a world in treacherous flux. Mankell describes the predatory capitalists of the New China, while also exposing the overstrained judicial system in Sweden. I establish some of this political analysis a bit tedious, but more intellectual readers may delight in it.
All in all, there’s something reasonably satisfying about a down-to-planet person like Birgitta going up against a secret psychopath of fantastic wealth and power. I recommend clearing a weekend for this book, so you won’t have to place it down.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
This tale takes the reader from Sweden to China to Africa — and gives a excellent history of the cruelty that took place in the building of the American railroads in the 1800s and how ancient sins never die.
It starts with the murder of an entire tiny Swedish Hamlet. The only thing the victims have in common is that they all share the same last name. The police find a name who confesses to the crime. Meantime a judge, Birgitta Roslen, who lives in distant Helsingborg, reads the account and is struck by the name Andren.
Her mother was adopted by a couple by that name and she becomes curious whether members of this family tree were among the murdered. When she travels to the tiny hamlet she discovers they were indeed victims (and were in their nineties). She gets permission to go into the house and finds an ancient diary written by “J. Andren” who had gone to America in the 1800s and worked as a superintendent for the building of the transcontinental railroad. She does some Internet research and discovers an American family tree with same name has been butchered in the same way many year ago.
Another diary written by one of the Chinese laborers named San talked about how cruel this Andren has been to him and his brother and vows his revenge.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Show Amazon that the pricing in Kindle of 13.60 is just unadorned incorrect. Do not order books that are over 9.99
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5