Wallander the troubled man krister henriksson biography

Fictional Swedish police officer, created by Henning Mankell

Fictional character

Kurt Wallander (Swedish pronunciation:[vaˈlǎnːdɛr]) is a fictional Swedish policeinspector created by Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell (1948 – 2015). He is the protagonist of many thriller/mystery novels set in and around the town of Ystad, 56 km (35 mi) south-east of the city of Malmö, in the southern province of Scania. Wallander has been portrayed on screen by the actors Rolf Lassgård, Krister Henriksson, Kenneth Branagh and Adam Pålsson.

Fictional character biography

Wallander was born in 1948. His mother died when he was about 14. After completing national service, he joined the police. As a young police officer, he was nearly killed when a drunk whom he was questioning stabbed him with a butcher's knife (this is mentioned in the account of his first case). He has a sister, Kristina. Wallander was once married, but his wife Mona left him and he has since had a difficult relationship with his rebellious only child, Linda, who barely survived a suicide attempt when she was fifteen. He also has issues with his father, an artist who has painted the same landscape 7,000 times for a living; the elder Wallander strongly disapproved of his son's decision to join the police force and frequently derides him for it.

Wallander is a great fan of opera; while in his car he regularly listens to recordings of famous opera singers such as Maria Callas, and when he can find the time goes to opera performances, sometimes crossing over to Copenhagen, Denmark for this purpose. At one time, Wallander had dreamed of making opera his life, leaving the police force and becoming the impresario of his friend, Sten Widén, a tenor who aspired to sing opera. But Widén's voice was not good enough and the dream came to naught—a crushing disappointment in Wallander's life (as in Widén's).

Inspector Wallander has few cl

This article is about the Swedish television series starring Krister Henriksson. For the earlier series starring Rolf Lassgård, see Wallander (film series). For the BBC programme starring Kenneth Branagh, see Wallander (British TV series).

Wallander (Swedish pronunciation:[vaˈlǎnːdɛr]) is a Swedish television series adapted from Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels, starring Krister Henriksson in the title role. The first season of thirteen films was produced in 2005 and 2006, with one taken directly from a novel and the remainder with new storylines suggested by Mankell. The second season of thirteen films was shown between 2009 and 2010. The stories are set in Ystad, Skåne near the southern tip of Sweden.

The three films Before the Frost (#1), Mastermind (#6), and The Secret (#13) were premiered in cinemas, with the rest first released as direct-to-DVD movies. The first episode of the second series, Hämnden (The Revenge), was released in Swedish cinemas in January 2009; the rest of the series was made for television. A third and final season, containing six 90 minute episodes, aired in 2013 with Charlotta Jonsson replacing the late Johanna Sällström as Linda Wallander. The first episode, adapted from the novel The Troubled Man, was released in cinemas in January 2013.

Season 1, 2005–06

From 2005 to 2006, the first 13 new stories, starring Krister Henriksson as Kurt Wallander, were produced. The first film is based on the Henning Mankell novel Before the Frost and was released in cinemas. The rest of the films are original stories based on plots written by Mankell, with scriptwriting completed by others. Two more were theatrical releases, and the rest were released on DVD and shown on TV.

S1 episodes

Season 2, 2009–10

In 2008, a further 13 films were commissioned. Filming began in August 2008, and continued during 2009. The 13 episodes were release

With the recent broadcasting of Kenneth Branagh’s portrayal of Inspector Wallander, played as an emotionally crippled, intense man who relies on his extraordinary intuition, Mankell’s excellent novels are once again in the spotlight. He’s not a patch on Krister Henriksson’s brooding and detached version, but so far Branagh has stayed true to Mankell’s truly inspiration novels, which is a bonus.

Branagh’s version of The Troubled Man is soon to be shown, therefore I thought I’d review the book that inspired it and encourage anyone who can lay their hands on a copy to read it as soon as possible.

This is a truly exceptional book, and one which I cannot recommend highly enough. Packed with excitement, adventure, politics and human drama, the novel is a great way to learn about Swedish history (to get in with the cool kids who all think they’re great because they watched the Daniel Craig version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo).

It is also a great read by itself, and is a fantastic example of the superb writing style that made Mankell a household name throughout Europe long before Larsson. Whilst other of Mankell’s attempts to combine human stories with politics (such as the confused The Man from Beijing) suffer from poor human drama and ridiculous plots, The Troubled Man is an excellent example of a narrative woven around a political plot which could have dramatic consequences.

The plot centres around Wallander and his new father in law, Haken von Enke, a disguised formal navel officer, who goes missing following his birthday party, at which he revels to Wallander a story from his past. Wallander, officially suspended after an incident which threatens to destroy his life, conducts an informal investigation which draws him into the heart of an international conspiracy.

Like many of the previous novels, this is a thrilling read, although luckily it does not suffer as some do from overac

More accurately, there are two troubled men at the heart of the latest Henning Mankell novel, not one. The first is Haken von Enke, an upper-class Swede who rose quickly through the ranks to become a senior naval commander during the Cold War, until his career stalled following an incident in the early 1980s: von Enke cornered a foreign submarine in Swedish waters but, rather than force the vessel up to establish its presumed Russian identity, he allowed the submarine to escape.

In 2008, Detective Kurt Wallander's daughter Linda (with whom he has a loving but prickly relationship, exacerbated by her decision to follow him into the police force) announces that she and von Enke's financier son, Hans, are going to have a child together. Linda coaxes Wallander to join them at a party to celebrate Haken's 75th birthday, during which the retired commander corners the detective with a long account of the Cold War stand-off, and his subsequent suspicions about possible high-level espionage and a political cover-up. After 25 years, von Enke feels he is close to the truth, and seems distinctly uneasy about it.

The second troubled man is Wallander himself, who is in the region of 60, works and drinks too hard, exercises too little, is overweight, over-stressed and lies awake at night thinking of death. He's diabetic and takes a daily cocktail of seven pills, which he wisely keeps quiet from Linda – who nevertheless has an astute grasp of her father's emotional health: "loneliness will eat you up from the inside". Relations with Linda's mother remain vituperative, and a chance visit from Baiba Liepa, who spurned Wallander's offer of marriage during their passionate affair a decade earlier and is now dying of cancer, adds grief to his morbidity. Perhaps even more alarming, moments of complete mental blankness are overwhelming Wallander with increasing frequency, and terrify him so much that he hasn't the nerve to consult a doctor.

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