Review of “The Man From Beijing” by Henning Mankell

This book has one of the best beginnings of a suspense/mystery that I’ve read in a long time. But the second half of the book left me in major zoning-out mode.

The story begins in 2006 in the remote Swedish village of Hesjövallen. Nineteen residents have been brutally massacred, and there is no clue left whatsoever except one red ribbon lying in the snow.

Meanwhile, in the city of Helsingborg, the 50-something judge Birgitta Roslin discovers that her mother’s foster parents, the Andrens, are among those who were slaughtered. She contacts the police officer in charge, Viv Sundberg, but is basically brushed aside. Wanting to know more, she takes some days off and drives to Hesjövallen. There, in the cottage that had belonged to her mother’s foster parents, she discovers some diaries. She reads that one of the ancestors of the Andren family had gone to the United States, and had become a supervisor of the Chinese indentured servants (including one Wang San) who helped build railroads in Nevada in 1864.

But how is it all connected? When the scene transfers to Beijing to one of San’s descendants, the plot gets pulled together. But it is also here that it begins to bog down. A detour to Africa to hear the characters debate China’s plans to help cultivate the land doesn’t help the tempo. It is only when we go back to Europe in the last part of the book that the author seems to remember this is a suspense novel.

Evaluation: For me there was a little too much discourse on Chinese history and foreign policy. I’m not saying it’s not an interesting and important topic, but it’s like putting raisins in cheesecake; I just don’t like my genres mixed together like that. My expectation for a suspense thriller is for suspense and thriller-osity. I want intrigue and excitement, not lectures on Mao’s concept of progress or the economic role of China in the twenty-first century. Both the beginning and end of the book did provide the scary tension for which one selects these books. But the middle? Well, maybe I’m too much a product of the short attention span generation. ….

One good aspect of this novel is the characterization of Birgitta. Her meditations about her marriage and about the course of her life ring so true. And her naivety makes you just want to shake some sense into Birgitta, and yet, it makes her seem so real!

I should also note that there are apparently people all over the world who don’t mind metaphorical raisins in cheesecake, since this is an international bestseller.

Rating: 3.5/5

Published in the U.S. by Knopf, 2010