The Troubled Man
Leopard Förlag first edition cover, showing Wallander with his dog
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| Author | Henning Mankell |
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| Original title | Den orolige mannen |
| Country | Sweden |
| Language | Swedish |
| Series | Kurt Wallander #10 |
| Genre | Crime fiction |
| Publisher | Leopard förlag |
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Publication date
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18 August 2009 |
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Published in English
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February 2011 |
| Media type | print (hardback) |
| Pages | 500 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 436914592 |
| Preceded by | The Pyramid |
The Troubled Man (Swedish: Den orolige mannen) is a crime fiction novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell, featuring police inspector Kurt Wallander. It is the twelfth and final novel in the Wallander series. The pace of The Troubled Man is significantly slower than the previous Wallander stories, with several chapters between murders.[1]
A highly-decorated Swedish naval officer, Håkan von Enke, disappears during his daily walk. For Kurt Wallander this becomes a very personal case as Von Enke is Linda Wallander's father-in-law. The clues lead back in time to the Cold War and hired killers from Eastern Europe. Inspector Wallander suspects that he may be dealing with the worst spy scandal in Swedish history. At the same time, Wallander is also dealing with the onset of dementia, and in particular, with the loss of his memory.
Henning Mankell had originally planned to write no more Wallander stories after the publication of the short story collection The Pyramid (Pyramiden) in 1999. However, the novel Before the Frost (Innan frosten) appeared in 2002, shifting the focus of the stories to Wallander's daughter Linda, who has joined the police force and is assigned to her father's station in Ystad. Mankell planned more novels focusing on Linda's police career but subsequently abandoned them after the death of Johanna Sällström, the actress who portrayed Linda in the Swedish Wallander TV series. Several years passed before Mankell decided there was one more Kurt Wallander story to tell, and this story forms the plot of The Troubled Man.
The naval aspect of The Troubled Man was inspired by the submarine incursions into Swedish territorial waters between 1982 and 1983, which Mankell considered the worst scandal in Swedish political history. These events will also be the subject of Mankell's play Politik, set to debut at in Autumn 2010. Mankell got the idea for the play while he was working on the novel. The play's main character is the late Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, who also appears in the novel. The play will start on a submarine and end in the aftermath of Palme's assassination. Mankell has stated that he hopes that Michael Nyqvist, known for his role in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, will play the lead.
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Wikipedia