New Book: Faceless Killers

I'm currently reading Faceless Killers the first book in Henning Mankell's Inspector Wallander series of books spurred largely because of the recent BBC series (three hour and a half long episodes based on three of the books in the series). I found the TV shows to be pretty good but a bit goofy in places, and found each episode's plot to get progressively and somewhat exponentially better. As the semi-promised second series is on hold while actor Kenneth Brannagh directs Thor for Marvel Entertainment (a somewhat safe and wholly American choice considering the amount of goofy faux Ye Olde English coming from Norsemen in the comics and Brannagh's Shakespearean background), I figured now would be a good time to keep interest up and dive in.

Kurt Wallander is an archetype to the point of stereotype in the detective/police genre. The man who is married to his job and as such loses his family. The good man caught up in a frustrating system, and on and on. He drinks too much, eats to little and when he does eat makes what nutritionists would deem Bad Choices, and works much harder than he should.

In the early morning of January in 1990, an elderly couple is murdered in their bed with the only clue being the last words of the wife's "foreign."

This leads to basically a narrative examination of racism, immigration policy, refugee camps, and political maneuvering between the various branches of government and police.

There is some really good interplay between Wallander and the other characters but not with witty bon mots.

I'm trying to find and articulate the commonalities between Wallander, Martin Beck and Aurelio Zen but am having a bit of a time trying to do so. They are nearly interchangeable and I can't quite tell if this is because of the authors, the genre or the characters.

Perhaps it will come to me.