The Troubled Man / Henning Mankell 367 p.

I write about this last Wallander mystery with a heavy heart, as if I were saying good-bye to a friend. Here we find Kurt, now 60, still working as a police detective in Ystad, Sweden. The mystery this time is a cold war spy teaser - not my favorite genre - but it hardly matters. The real story, as always, is Wallander himself. Old age and death are constantly on his mind now. His relationships with his colleagues feature less prominently, and the focus shifts to the most important relationship in his life, that with his daughter, Linda. I love the authentic portrayal of this fractious but loving father and daughter. An ominous sidelight are Kurt's frightening memory lapses - are they signs of fatigue, or something more menacing? It is Wallander's hallmark that whatever life throws at him, he keeps going forward.