The Troubled Man / Henning Mankell

The final installment of the popular Kurt Wallander detective series follows Wallander to the end of his career. As he transitions from the loss of his father, his family focus shifts to his newly-born granddaughter and a renewed relationship with his daughter Linda. Worrisome episodes of forgetfulness, however, force him to confront his own mortality, and the sudden death of his once-beloved Baiba is a sign that his remaining years are precious.

The disappearance of Linda’s “in-laws” (since she isn’t married to their son, what’s the proper term?) is the case that preoccupies Wallander in The Troubled Man. Their backstory takes in the complicated history of post-war Europe's Cold War politics, a suggestion of espionage, Olof Palme, the CIA... all culminating with the rash of submarine incursions into Swedish territorial waters from the 1980s that I remember so well.

I was fascinated by Wallander’s last case, but also felt that the entrance into his final life stage was very compelling and realistic. It was sad and melancholy, but life is often that way. Of course, it’s not likely that Mankell will write another Wallander novel, but Conan Doyle did resuscitate Sherlock Holmes, so there is a smidgen of hope. It’s a little sad to say “adjö" to a good Swedish friend.

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So Much for That / Lionel Shriver

This novel comes from the 2005 Orange Prize winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin , a disturbing book in which a parent with ambivalent feelings towards motherhood deals with the aftermath of a Columbine-style school killing perpetrated by her son. Lionel Shriver has said that she prefers to create characters that are hard to love, and So Much for That certainly contains some flinty characters, who although they may be hard to love, are nevertheless very believable. The topic this time is healthcare in America. Shep is all ready to launch into an exotic early retirement on the island of Pemba off the eastern coast of Africa, but when his wife reveals a diagnosis of mesothelioma, he must hold on to his job to maintain family health coverage to see her through her devastating illness. His work colleague and friend, Jackson, experiences a medical dilemma completely of his own doing, which proves to be his un doing. Jackson's daughter suffers from an unusual genetic disorde...

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

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