If you’re familiar with Mankell’s Detective, Wallander, there’s something both comfortably familiar and refreshingly different about this book. Mankell displays a truly rare gift in describing the seemingly trivial inconsequentialities of the main character’s life without the reader wondering where the story is heading or what the relevance of the events described might be. This artfully crafted novel develops against a backdrop involving a muted story surrounding life in an isolated community in the Swedish archipelago that is disturbed by a series of arson attacks starting in the home of the lead character. Whilst there is a perfectly satisfactory story for the reader to follow that stands on its own, the book may be better seen as an almost elegiac review of the lead character’s life that wraps around the events surrounding the arson attacks and the unusual but strangely credible happenings in his personal life. The wistful and strongly felt remembrances of episodes from the lead character’s earlier life beautifully capture the bitter sweet feelings of a person realising that they are in the final chapters of a long life. Highly recommended!