Recent crime fiction

Henning Mankell bestrides the landscape of Scandavian crime fiction like a despondent colossus. Last year’s The Man from Beijing, was a disappointing stand-alone thriller with too much polemical baggage. His new novel, The Troubled Man (Harvill Secker, £17.99), brings the return of his series hero, Inspector Kurt Wallender. The title says it all: now that he’s 60, Wallender’s trademark gloom is darkened still further by the creeping fear that his memory is no longer what it used to be, and that this is the first symptom of a far more serious condition.

In the first few chapters, he also faces disciplinary action, breaks his wrist and gets mugged. So it comes almost as a relief when an old scandal involving a Soviet submarine threatens a former Swedish naval officer, whose son is the partner of Wallender’s daughter. The family asks Wallender, who is suspended from duty, to keep an eye on the Stockholm police’s investigation.