The Man Who Smiled Henning Mankell Vintage pbk £6.99 ISBN 0-099-45008-9 March 2006 L. J. Hurst

The Man Who Smiled is the latest Kurt Wallander mystery to appear in English, although it is only the fourth in the original Swedish series of ten. There is now a collection of short stories, Pyramids, alone outstanding. (Canongate have been publishing the Australian Shane Malone out of sequence in a similarly annoying fashion). Given the justifiable popularity of the novels, it is amazing to discover that all the books have been made into television films in Sweden and that now a second series of original stories by other authors has begun, just as other writers have taken on Inspectors Morse and Barnaby, yet none of Swedish films have reached our British television screens, a serious indictment of the buyers for all the channels. You can see a short clip of one on Henning Mankell's website to appreciate the quality.

All that said, The Man Who Smiled follows The Dogs Of Riga and The White Lioness. Wallander is in the dark night of his soul, wracked by guilt for killing a man who would have killed himself. Attempting to escape the guilt he takes long walks on the coast and then turns away an old friend who asks for his help. When he reads in the newspaper that that friend has been murdered he finds his purpose again.

All of the Wallander novels contain varying critiques of Swedish society, not just general capitalism which underlay the Wahloos' Martin Beck novels, but some of which will be unfamiliar in Britain – the legacy of Swedish Nazis revealed in The Return Of The Dancing Master is a good example. In The Man Who Smiled the critique concerns Sweden's dependence on, and acquiescence in, international trade. What that means, as Wallander discovers, is that some companies will lend themselves to any sort of trade, no matter how unethical or even illegal, and that the high echelons of the police and government will not want to disturb it. And as in all of Mankell's novels what it means, too, is grotesque murder. This one opens with a frightened man driving through fog when he has to stop for a figure seated on a chair on the road – the figure proving to be a man–sized dummy.

When everything has been cleared the good characters are good and the bad characters are bad. This also means that Wallander is never criticised for letting himself get into his initial state – his friend might not have been killed if he had acted earlier, but he never shows that sense of responsibility. Who, though, would have thought that police procedure in a northern land could carry so much moral weight? Try exploring it.