A Favorite Series is Complete

I am mourning the loss of one of my favorite characters when it comes to mysteries. I have been a huge fan of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series for about 8 years now and in that time I have read all of the Wallander mysteries including the Linda Wallander one which I did not love. For those of you who are not familiar with this series, Henning Mankell is a Swedish author who writes many books, my favorite is a series of mysteries that focus on the crime solving aspect of a mystery and one character in particular, Kurt Wallander. The books in this series proceed in the following order, although they were not published in this order in the United States:

1) Faceless Killers
2) Dogs of Riga
3) White Lioness
4) The Man Who Smiled
5) Sideteracked
6) The Fifth Woman
7) One Step Behind
8) Firewall

And this year the "prequel" to this series entitled The Pyramid and Four Other Kurt Wallander Mysteries was released in the US, I finished this book last week and wasn't sure what to write in the post regarding it. I loved the book and I love the character. This book was an interesting concept, where the author went back and developed the back story that had been eluded to in all other books but never really fully revealed. However, I feel like this development was unnecessary and sometimes specifics were confusing. The mysteries were interesting, but the strength of the other books which is the procedural development of the cases was missing.

I highly recommend starting with Faceless Killers and moving your way through the titles ending in Firewall before you even think about picking up this book. I feel like you will enjoy those more and this title is not necessary.

If you love all of those titles then come back and read the Pyramid its kind of like the eulogy, it provides a bit of closure, you can mourn the loss of a character and begin moving on.

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