Wave goodbye to the weight-gaining, drunk-driving Inspector Wallander

Some years ago I met the Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he was staying. A waitress came up to our table. ‘I think, Belinda,’ Mankell said to her suavely, ‘that I would like a glass or two of your red wine!’ Momentarily confused, Belinda asked Mankell to repeat his order. After she had gone, Mankell commented peevishly to me: ‘What’s the matter with her? Was there anybody at home? Hello?’ Clearly, the hoped-for flirtation with Belinda had not come off. More than just the top button of Mankell’s black shirt was undone.

Mankell could not have imagined how successful the Inspector Wallander mysteries would be when, 23 years ago, he published the first in the series. In his native Sweden, the series triumphed overnight; Mankell has now sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. His shambolic gumshoe Kurt Wallander remains one of the most impressive and credible creations in crime fiction today. Grumpy detectives are a staple of the genre, and Wallander is fabulously grumpy. He eats too much junk food; miserably divorced, he indulges in ever more gloomy talk of his (and humanity’s) demise.

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Fans of the detective will be disappointed to learn that An Event in Autumn is to be Wallander’s final investigation. Mankell was diagnosed with cancer last January, and has reportedly grown weary of his creation. (Each week he receives letters addressed to Wallander; he has even been asked how Wallander might vote in an EU referendum.) The detective has become more famous than his creator.

In this 150-page novella, Wallander is increasingly forgetful, alcoholic and diabetic, yet he retains a degree of disabused integrity. Typically, the Sweden of An Event in Autumn is a country whose time has passed: behind the roseate flush of its social-democratic prosperity lies a deepening economic malaise and signs of racial tension.