AN EVENT IN AUTUMN was a Wallander novella that Henning Mankell wrote for the Dutch book market. They did a thing one year where if you bought a book, you got one free, apparently, and Mankell wrote this as the free giveaway book. It comes just before the final novel in the Wallander sequence, I think, but works just fine as a standalone intro to the Wallander experience, despite what reads like a less-than-smooth translation in places.
It’s a dank and miserable little story, very much in the Sjowall/Wahloo Nordic noir tradition. (Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were Swedish Marxist journalists who invented modern Nordic crime fiction as basically a side gig.) Signatures of the style include the story taking up a large stretch of time, because it takes forever to get forensics and do the field work and police detectives have more than one case to deal with at any given moment. Also, there will almost always be a sociopolitical angle – some failure of the state or society. I found that particular note slightly muted here, or perhaps scattered. This is Mankell at his least pungent and most melancholy.
AN EVENT IN AUTUMN was adapted by the generally fine WALLANDER tv series made by the BBC and starring Kenneth Branagh as Wallander. However, if you’ve seen it, the book has surprises. The adaptation folded it into the arc of the show, and that’s not where the book happens.
If this slim book appeals to you, then it will open up the entire Wallander sequence for you, and I envy you getting to discover it and hope it is as joyful for you as it was for me when I first laid eyes on that spare, bleak prose.
AN EVENT IN AUTUMN, Henning Mankell (buy)