The last word on Kurt Wallander

An Event in Autumn 
by Henning Mankell
Harvill Secker 
3.5 stars

This really is the end. After 10 novels, a collection of short stories and, finally, this novella, An Event in Autumn, all of Swedish author Henning Mankell's stories featuring the increasingly careworn detective Kurt Wallander have now been published in English.

There will be no more tales about Wallander - a series Mankell has often described as his "novels of Swedish unrest". At the end of the last full novel - the disappointing The Troubled Man - the detective begins a slow descent into the "darkness" known as Alzheimer's disease. "After that there is nothing more. The story of Kurt Wallander is finished, once and for all."

So fans should be pleasantly surprised by the novella - chronologically dating to a period just before The Troubled Man - which, Mankell, 66, says in the afterword, is definitely the end: "There are no more stories about Kurt Wallander."

Mankell was asked to write a short story that could be given away free to everyone in the Netherlands who bought a crime novel during a particular month: hence An Event in Autumn, which was published in 2004. The BBC then adapted the story for its hugely popular television series, starring Kenneth Branagh.

Mankell watched the episode and found it "still felt alive and relevant": the story was then published in Swedish and, finally, in English, its belated - yet welcome - appearance giving the detective a fitting farewell.

Set in 2002, it sees a grumpy Wallander looking back on his career as he views the autumn scenery outside his office window. His mood worsens the next day when his Sunday lie-in is disturbed by a colleague trying to sell him a house, close to the country home of his late father.

It is the remains of a human hand, sticking out of the soil. Soon Wallander and his team dig up the skeleton of a woman. Forensic tests suggest the middle-aged victim was hanged, hastily buried, and her body left undisturbed for many decades. Wallander is told to forget the cold case, but he refuses; before long he finds another body.

This spare, briskly paced novella is enjoyable while it lasts, offering - rather like a farewell embrace with a loved one - a bittersweet final memory of Wallander. The mystery, complete with the detective's usual reckless disregard for his own safety, is over all too soon, even if the slow-burn tale's satisfyingly nerve-jangling ending doesn't disappoint.

For those wanting even more, or for readers yet to read all of the books, Mankell's essay with the novella, "How it started, how it finished and what happened in between" - in which he declares "my story about Kurt Wallander has come to an end" - offers intriguing insights into his motivation for writing the books and acts as a fine introduction to the series.

Mankell has written 20 other novels and 10 children's stories since his 1973 debut in Swedish. But those about Wallander - the first book, Faceless Killers, was published in Swedish in 1990, and in English in 1997 - are his greatest successes, selling more than 30 million copies in more than 40 languages.

All of the stories - set in Sweden's vast, beautiful rolling landscapes during long, apparently innocent summer days and more threatening ice-cold, winter nights - tap into its hitherto unknown dark side of life, the evil lurking just beneath the surface of people.

His novels have been eerily prescient, too, focusing on phenomena such as racial killings, global bank fraud, the trafficking of human organs and political assassination just before they became reality.

The years before Wallander's debut in Faceless Killers saw a huge surge in the number of refugees living on benefits in Sweden, including those from war-torn Yugoslavia, and other parts of Eastern Europe, Iran and Iraq, and Latin America. This sparked resentment among the nation's then population of 8.5 million.

On his return in 1989, after living in Africa for an extended period, Mankell was shocked by the level of xenophobia. "Sweden has never been totally free from this social evil, but it was obvious to me that it had increased dramatically," he writes in the essay.

He chose to write about it in a crime novel because "in my world racist acts are criminal outrages". He knew he needed a detective to investigate the crime and a search through the local phone book led to the name Kurt, which was "short and sounded fairly unusual" and then Wallander, "neither too common or too uncommon".

Wallander shares Mankell's 1948 year of birth. "I was clear that I would create a human being who was very like myself and the unknown reader - a person who is constantly changing, both mentally and physically."

To boost Wallander's appeal during the course of the stories, Mankell gave him a common disease suffered by many people: diabetes - which made the detective even more popular. "Nobody can imagine James Bond stopping in a street, while chasing after some criminal or other, in order to inject himself with insulin. But Wallander does," he writes.

He adds: "The fact that Wallander is always changing is crucial … a book in which I know all there is to know about the main character after just one page, or realise nothing is going to change him or her in any way for the next 1,000 pages is not a book I would have the patience to read."

In the gripping first book, Wallander answers what he expects is just a routine call, but it leads him to a country farmhouse where an old man has been tortured and killed and his wife left for dead. She whispers to Wallander a half-heard clue, which, when leaked by the press, sparks fierce racial hatred.

The book's huge success made him realise he could write a series, and led to a gritty 1992 sequel, The Dogs of Riga, in which Wallander investigates the shooting deaths of two men, whose bodies are found in a life raft washed up on a beach. Inquiries reveal the men were criminals, but the intricate, case takes him to Latvia.

Next Wallander is called in to help find an estate agent who has mysteriously disappeared, in The White Lioness, but the trail leads him to a group determined to carry out an assassination in South Africa.

The Man Who Smiled, published in 1994, is one of his best stories. It sees a depressed Wallander deeply troubled after shooting dead a gunman in the line of duty. He ignores a friend's request to investigate the death of his father, only for the friend to die, too.

Sidetracked is gripping: Wallander's hopes of a peaceful summer are dashed by a killer who scalps his victims. The body count is high in the intricately plotted The Fifth Woman in which the murder of an elderly birdwatcher is linked to the brutal deaths of four nuns and a fifth woman in Africa.

Two of the best instalments followed: One Step Behind sees Wallander struggling to catch the killer of three teenage friends in a wood, while Firewall starts with the death of a man at a cash machine, and leads Wallander on a baffling trail of dead bodies.

Before the Frost has Wallander investigating the discovery of a severed head and two hands positioned as if in prayer. Disappointingly, the novel struggles to come to grips with Wallander relegated to a supporting role as his soon-to-be policewoman daughter, Linda, takes centre stage.

After that, Mankell seemed to lose heart; penultimate book The Pyramid has five largely forgettable short tales - save for the title story - about Wallander's early days in the force.

If you need an outstanding Mankell novel to sate your desire for Swedish detectives, try his best book, The Return of the Dancing Master (2000 in Swedish, and 2003 in English), featuring policeman Stefan Lindman as he investigates the savage death of a retired policeman.

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