BOOK REVIEW: 'Man from Beijing'

THE MAN FROM BEIJING

By Henning Mankell

Knopf, $25.95,

384 pages

REVIEWED BY MURIEL DOBBIN

It begins with a starving wolf chewing on the leg of a man slain in a village massacre in Sweden. And it ends with the wolf.

In between, Henning Mankell takes his readers from Sweden to England, Africa and China on a whirlwind of an international plot that has its roots in the desperation of Chinese slave workers that evolved into the slaying of 19 Swedes by a hit man wielding a sword.

Simple it's not. But Mr. Mankell never is. This is one of his most complicated and skilled mysteries, in which dark threads are woven into an unlikely conclusion. His writing is reflected in the first sentences of this latest book, which read, "Frozen snow, severe frost. Midwinter ... a lone wolf crosses the unmarked border and enters Sweden from Norway. ... It is beginning to feel the pain of hunger and is desperately searching for food."

The hungry young wolf finds food after it detects the smell of blood in the tiny village of Hesjovallen.

What it has welcomed as nourishment causes a heart attack for a wandering photographer confronted by the horror of what he sees in the houses of the remote little village. It becomes an international crime scene, invaded by police and journalists. Strangely, it also attracts the attention of Birgitta Roslin, a judge in a Swedish city, who suddenly realizes she has a connection to the victms of the village. She is drawn reluctantly into the investigation, in which her only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene, with its match at a restaurant in a nearby town where a mysterious Chinese stranger had spent the night of the killings.

Story Continues →