Very long, very cerebral, highly entertaining mystery. At times, I grew impatient at the length of the book, but I think it paid off in successful, complex characterizations of victims, villains, and detectives. The author has a gift for letting the reader see tenuous connections between the very sparse clues develop precisely as they develop for Detective Wallender and his team. Thinking back over the novel, I realize that I never put anything together before Wallender did, and found myself applauding his superb analytical skills over and over. I think I'm trying to say that the author does not manipulate the reader but rather takes us along for the ride.

And the setting is important too. For me, Sweden is an exotic, far-away land. Grabbing a ferry over to Riga or a train up to Almhult, though mundane to a Swede, seems very adventurous to me. Towns like Malmo, Ystad, and Goteborg, only ever seen on a map, became part of my world for the week or two it took to read this book.

Julia - 4 stars
Since the first of the year, I have been on a Kurt Wallander series binge; this being the sixth that I've read in the series. (I am reading them in order, which isn't necessary since Mankell provides very efficient, two sentence recaps that give the reader all she needs to know to carry on.)With the first 40 pages I thought that this one - The Fifth Woman - just might be the novel that unhooks me from this Swedish crime novel addiction. Alas, I was wrong. I can't quite put my finger on what makes these books so enthralling ... truly the murders investigated by Ystad police officer Kurt Wallander and his team are gruesome, gross, disturbing, all of that ... yet the dialogue is spot-on, the interpersonal relationships effective, and the main character written so convincingly that you have to keep reading. Furthermore, Mankell skillfully builds suspense. Often, like in this book, the reader knows who the killer is from the get-go, perhaps not the full story of who and why and all that, which one might suspect would suck all the suspense out of a book - but no - it's almost better since as the investigation gets closer and closer, the reader can't help but tear through the pages to reach the end. I highly recommend this series for anyone who likes crime fiction. But, be careful, you'll disregard all other commitments and responsibilities once you hit page 75.

really good. enjoyed it. Mankell's story-development keeps getting better and better imo.

Eh. Kind of tedious, is how I would describe this book. The climactic segment was very good, and almost worth the wait (but not quite). The lead detective character, Wallander, was hard to like: at times obnoxious and bullying, and then whiny and sullen at other times. Domestic violence was the background theme of the story and Wallender himself was not unfamiliar with dishing it out. I liked that his own experiences bothered him but it didn't help in the likability department. Also, the author makes it known from the beginning that a woman is the antagonist, so I don't think what I'm going to say next will spoil anything for anyone who hasn't read this, but feel free to stop reading now......

I found it unlikely that a modern-day police detective with years of experience would be incredulous at the mere idea that a woman could be involved with a violent crime that wasn't a crime of passion or self-defense. I know it's not common, but please. The book has dozens of sentences that are variations of, "It's unthinkable that a woman would be capable of such calculated violence". Pretty much every single character says this, and multiple times. Tedious.

Also, the editing wasn't that great (for example, a couple times they misspelled Wallender as "Walland"), and it makes me think that the translation might not be that great either.

I thought there was a lot of potential with the material, but too much time was wasted rehashing certain themes while other more rather interesting ones were barely touched on.

Това е първата книга от Хенинг Манкел, която попада в ръцете ми. Признавам, с нея авторът успя доста високо да вдигне летвата в представите ми за това що е то истински добър трилър - жанр, за който често си мисля, че едва ли има вече нещо, с което да ме изненада или впечатли. Но животът винаги опровергава максимите, които съзнанието ни поставя.
Книгата започва с бруталното убийство на четири монахини в отдалечен манастир в Африка и на случайна шведска туристка, потърсила подслон при тях - петата жертва.
Няколко месеца по-късно, в Швеция, започва серия от убийства в и около района на Юстад. Убийства, които шокират полицията с своята жестокост и детайлно планиране. Привидно жертвите нямат нищо общо по между си.
Първата жертва - самотен стар ерген - бивш търговец на коли, живеещ в имение с подходящото име "Усамотение", който е страстен любител на птиците и любител-поет, пишещ стихове, посветени единствено на птиците, е намерен мъртъв близо до дома си. Странното в случая е, че мъжът е паднал в дълбок ров и се е набол върху предварително заложени от убиеца заострени бамбукови пръти - по подобие на начина, по който ловците правят своите капани за диви зверове. Мистерията се заплита още повече, когато разследващите откриват в сейфа на убития мумифицирана човешка глава и шокиращ дневник на неизвестен мъж, сражавал се като наемник в африканска гражданска война.
С намирането на втория труп нещата стават още по-озадачаващи... Кой и поради каква причина би убил скромен собственик на цветарски магазин и страстен любител на орхидеите точно преди отпътуването му на фото-сафари за орхидеи в Кения?
Нищо не е такова, каквото изглежда. Манкел умело води повествуванието до неочакваната развръзка като пралелно с криминалната нишка изгражда образа на главния герой - инспектор Валандер. Хареса ми представянето на героя в чисто човешка светлина - не като някакъв супер-герой, а като човек със своите особености и недостатъци, със своите собствени проблеми за решаване - сложните отношенията с баща му, проблемите около развода му, трудностите в общуването с дъщеря му.
Препоръчвам тази книга на любителите на жанра. Мисля, че няма да има разочаровани - тя предлага всичко, което можем да желаем от подобен вид четиво - интересна интрига, добре изградени характери, напрежение до самия край. Скандинавски съспенс от най-висока класа.

3.5
Creative, interesting plot.
Very dry, almost staccato presentation. Many very short, repetitive sentences fill paragraph after paragraph in a perplexing narrative style. Perplexing because it was intrusive, becoming a separate mystery in my mind -- i.e. Is this a different translator than was responsible for the other Mankell books I read? A competent, academic translator, able to move the work from Swedish to English in a correct way, but lacking the green-shoots spark of creative life that seemed to be missing?

The story itself is good; complex, surprising, current. The shooting at the end did not fit the "seriousness" of the story to me. It felt superfluous and in a strange way, unworthy of the writer, as if he couldn't leave it on its own merits, but had to end in a very dramatic way. It may work fine elsewhere, but was unnecessarily contrived for this book.

Excellent! This is my first of Henning's that I have read and he is just amazing. He is a master of mystery and this Kurt Wallander mystery is superb. He brings the landscape, emotions, eco-socio changes that the country of Sweden has gone thru, it paints a picture and is a wholesome reading- very few authors can paint a eco socio setting in a mystery and weave that through the story, including the emotions of characters, etc.

Just a para on pg 224: When I was growing up, Sweden was still a country where people darned their socks. I even learned how to do it in school myself. Then suddenly one day it was over. Socks with holes in them were just thrown out. No-one bothered to repair them. The whole society changed. 'Wear it out and toss it' was th eonly rule that applied. As long as it was just a matter of our socks, the change didnt make much diff.But then it started to spread, until i became a kind of invisible moral code. I think it changed our view of of right and wrong of what you were allowed to do to other people and what you weren't. More ad more people, especially young people like you , feel unwelcome in their own country. How do they react? With aggression and contempt........And they have absolutely no memory of a time when we drned our socks. When we didn't throw everything away, whether or was our woollen socks or human being."

these stories just seem to get better. wallander is a fine detective, a concerned partner and a human like all of the rest of us. the murderer in this tale was a bit of a surprise...

https://knyguziurkes.com/2021/05/04/t...

La quinta mujer es el Wallander #6. Hay que leerlos en orden para ver el crecimiento de nuestro querido detective.
Cada vez más sensible, cada vez más humano, en definitiva más cerca de uno mismo. Sentimos la desazón en la que va cayendo novela tras novela.

La vulnerabilidad de Kurt es lo que me parece le falta al Salvo Montalbano de Camilleri o al Bosch de Connelly, por nombrar a dos de mis preferidos.

Los casos policiales de Mankell están muy bien planteados y se van desarrollando paso a paso sin apuros. Se saborean.

Τελείωσε και η Πέμπτη Γυναίκα-είχε αρκετά σημεία που υπερ-ανέλυε τις σκέψεις του επιθεωρητή και έτεινε στην πολυλογία,ΟΜΩΣ,σε καμία περίπτωση δεν ήταν δυσάρεστη αυτή η κατάσταση.Απολαυστικό από την πρώτη ως την τελευταία σελίδα.
5⭐

Just received the rest of the Henning MAnkell books... back to Det. Wallender. :)
This novel begins when a woman receives a letter stating that her mother has been murdered along with four nuns in an African convent - the crime has been hidden so that no one know about it.
Then an old man who writes bird poetry is impaled on sharpened bamboo stakes embedded in a ditch on his property while a person watches from his bird tower.
As the police are trying to comprehend the man who was impaled... they learn that another man has gone missing. When this man is found murdered in a different but equally brutal fashion - they begin to connect the two murders
A lot of twists and turns. The reader knows information about the killer early in the book that the police don't know - we also get to follow the killers thoughts and plans. It is interesting to observe the police following the clues in order to reach the understanding as the reader has from knowing the killers thoughts.