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The Man from Beijing: A Novel
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The Man from Beijing: A Novel
Unavailable
The Man from Beijing: A Novel
Audiobook15 hours

The Man from Beijing: A Novel

Written by Henning Mankell

Narrated by Rosalyn Landor

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

The acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, writing at the height of his powers, now gives us an electrifying stand-alone global thriller.

January 2006. In the Swedish hamlet of Hesjövallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene.

Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: Her grandparents, the Andréns, are among the victims, and Birgitta soon learns that an Andrén family in Nevada has also been murdered. She then discovers the nineteenth-century diary of an Andrén ancestor-a gang master on the American transcontinental railway-that describes brutal treatment of Chinese slave workers. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the Hesjövallen murders, but Birgitta is determined to uncover what she now suspects is a more complicated truth.

The investigation leads to the highest echelons of power in present-day Beijing, and to Zimbabwe and Mozambique. But the narrative also takes us back 150 years into the depths of the slave trade between China and the United States-a history that will ensnare Birgitta as she draws ever closer to solving the Hesjövallen murders.

From the Hardcover edition.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 16, 2010
ISBN9780307712363
Unavailable
The Man from Beijing: A Novel

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Reviews for The Man from Beijing

Rating: 3.4352941323529413 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

680 ratings63 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not a Wallander book, and not up to the level as those I've read from that series. The start is excellent, but it doesn't carry through very well at all.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I love Mankell's Inspector Wallander series. I picked up this book in an airport on a whim after facing a probable delay due to weather.

    What makes me enthusiastic about this book:
    1. Women are the central characters.
    2. All the women are at least middle-aged or older.
    3. The main protagonist is a successful judge having a mid-life crises that doesn't mimic that of a man's (it is a soulful and thoughtful portrait of an older woman neither acting like, nor desiring to be, 18 again).
    4. It takes place in Sweden, Nevada (!!), southern Africa, and Beijing. I raised my daughter in the northern Nevada desert (below freezing in winter, scorching hot in summer). I never thought I would enjoy reading northern Nevada history, fictionalized though it may be, in an international mystery novel.

    Unfortunately, the plot really slows towards the end. I kept thinking that Mankell should have written more but felt pressure to wrap things up...or, maybe it was that the characters were fighting to put an end to things so they could carry on with their lives. I feel he should have let things linger for a couple of more chapters. Of course, I spent a very rainy day in southern California devouring the pages of this book. I was cuddled on the couch with homemade soup cooking in the crockpot. Perhaps it was me. Perhaps I just did not want the mystery to end because it took me to such lovely places.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5

    I have read many of the inspector Wallander books, and like their mixture of crime, (usually international) politics, agonising over immigrants in Sweden plus extracts from the personal life of the hero.

    Without Wallander this mixture did not work so well. The geopolitics became overbearing and far fetched. Who could really believe that the Chinese could have a plan to export their peasants to Africa to exploit the agricultural potential? Or that Africans are not restive enough about the Chinese presence to accept it?

    The crime got lost.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Disappointing: a) desperately needs editing; b) wildly implausible crime scene and investigation; c) clumsy plotting; d) highly unlikely unravelling.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    a suspenseful easy read that moves briskly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This story ends well, and has a wonderful main character. Brigitta Roslin is a middle-aged judge in Sweden with a marriage that has stopped being a source of nourishment. A series of odd murders in northern Sweden captures Judge Roslin's attention and this ultimately leads her to China, London, and other locals. The author, Henning Mankell, taking along detour through China in the mid-nineteenth century and tries to connect it up to the murders in northern Sweden that pull Judge Roslin in, and almost get her killed. It was a long detour and I am not sure it was worth the trip. The last 100 pages are quite suspenseful. The story is well crafted and I love that the main character is a judge in her fifties...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Surely entertaining in that good on the edge way. From Sweden to China to Nevada to China to Mozambique. I liked this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this complex Swedish crime thriller, which intertwined a ghastly mass murder in northern Sweden with Europe's colonial past and China's possible colonialising future. The central character, Birgitta Rosin, is a middle-aged judge, and her tenuous connection to the victims of the mass-murder sets her on a chase across Sweden and China.A secondary plot traces a Chinese family from their origins to 19th Century US to contemporary Beijing and its inner power circles. These plot twists and turns are handled with skill and the story moves along at a great pace.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book started off really well but seemed to lose its way. The first part of the book that deals with the mass murder is fine but when the story moves to the nineteenth century and then back to the modern day taking in china and zimbabwe it falls apart.

    The female detective investigating the murders could have been much better developed and it feels as though she is there just to be a point of contact for the judge, also some of the things the judge does just strike me as being unbelieveable. Would a judge really enter a crime scene and remove documents from it?

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Begins as a conventional Swedish murder mystery in which virtually all the inhabitants of a remote village are slaughtered. Te reader is then transported to China and then America during the 1800's to follow the fortunes,or should I say misfortunes of three young Chinese brothers.Modern-day China comes next and finally to London's China-town.The main character is a Swedish judge who attempts to solve the original murders. She is no Wallender and thats a fact.She just gets herself deeper and deeper in trouble.Is it a good read or is it not ? On the whole it holds the attention,although it could have done with a little editing i think.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Henning Mankell has written some terrific books, but his isn't one of them. The book contained a lot of superlative dross that added nothing to the story, rather left me as the reader bored and waiting for the story to get back on line. There are some 35-40 characters in this novel -- some of them to such a minor degree one wonders why they are even brought in. Disappointed in the effort.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Henning Mankell is a masterful crime writer in translation - I am assuming he is as good or even better in his native language. This is a wonderfully nonlinear tail, and eschews classical expectations for the resolution of an investigation. Well worth a read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very interesting and different. The story is unusual and educational.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I'm hoping part of my struggle with this was the translation, but I'm not sure how much of slow pacing, dull villain and tedious characters I can blame on language issues. But the spare prose didn't help. I just didn't feel for any of the characters or even plot. And it didn't help all the dead in the village were treated as irrelevant. It was a frustrating read, but I'll look at other reviews to see if others can persuade me it was worth it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked this, although it was very uneven. It starts out as extremely interesting (if a bit gruesome) with the very different strands in Sweden, China, and Nevada being explored and then coming together. However, once you figure out the mystery, the character of the book really changes and the disparate elements don't really hang together that well. It tries to turn into an international thriller, but doesn't quite succeed. Since the mystery is solved early on, the book sort of peters out since there is no big reveal at the end. But I did like the main characters and a lot of the historical elements, especially the development of the West.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    He can certainly tell a story; however, I found his characters to be very thinly sketched and unsympathetic. The primary plot line staged in the first chapters of the novel ultimately make little sense when all is said and done. I liked it a lot in the beginning. The opening of the book is terrific, with well-practiced, creepy and engrossing scando-noir. I began to dislike it more and more as I got further along. He wants to talk about globalization and colonization and the New China. Fine. Why not write a travel book or non-fiction essay or something? This is a poor piece of fiction used as a wrapper for some actually very interesting ideas, but it simply fails as a coherent thriller. I literally (yes, actually, you know, like we used to use the word) threw the book down in disgust at the end because I was so angry at how he handled the central idea and opening premise. This is my first book by this author and perhaps I will try another because I know he is highly regarded but this particular novel just didn't work for me. I give the 2 stars mainly because I did enjoy some of his thoughts on the New China and its possible evolution and the problems it faces. Not recommended unless you are a Sinophile, in which case, you might well enjoy it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The man from Beijing wanted revenge on behalf of his ancestors. A relative of the victims gradually puts the pieces together. Having read Mr. Mankell’s “Kurt Wallander” series, where his detectives systematically get the bad guys, I found these policemen to be written quite differently. (hmm...)The action goes from the harsh winter scene in the small Swedish hamlet where the mystery starts, to the streets of Beijing and a glimpse into a vengeful mind. Along the way, is a back story of China in the 1890s, with starving Chinese, peasants Shanghaied and sold to work building the railroad on the American continent. Chinese politics and problems facing the country are also touched upon.I’m already a Henning Mankell fan, and this was another good story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This has to be the most schizophrenic book I’ve read all year.

    On one side of the scale there is storytelling at a genius level. It kept me gripped from its hauntingly written opening sequences, in which a brutal massacre in a small Swedish town is discovered, through several dips into the history of pre-communist China and the construction of the US railways using slave labour, through to vignettes in modern China, Zimbabwe and London. I read the entire thing in two sittings and was totally absorbed for the duration primarily because I never, once, knew what would happen next.

    There are also some truly compelling female characters. Swedish Judge Birgitta Roslin, a married woman in her 60’s who is grappling with a troubled marriage and the fact her life hasn’t panned out as she imagined it would when she was a radical student, discovers she is distantly connected to one of the couples murdered in the massacre. Becoming somewhat obsessed with the case and finding herself with time on her hands she travels to the scene of the crime, becomes a thorn in the side of local police and uncovers the lone piece evidence left by the killer (which the police conveniently ignore). Through a circuitous series of plot shenanigans Roslin meets up with an even more intriguing woman, Hong Qiu, who is something vague but high-up in Chinese officialdom. She is dealing with even bigger personal dilemmas than Roslin, not the least of which is what to do about her corrupt and probably criminal brother, and is undergoing something of a crisis of conscience of her own. The Swedish policewoman in charge of the murder investigation, Vivi Sundberg, is not drawn in quite as much depth and although she offers glimmers of interest I thought she ended up being a bit forgotten among the other powerful women in this story.

    In several other senses though the book is the literary equivalent of a basket case.

    The writing style, or perhaps the translation, is choppy and awkward at times. There are jarring changes of storytelling pace, unnecessary detail and repetition in parts and more clichés than I would expect. Or want. The historical portions in particular appear to have been crafted for their depressive instructiveness ahead of their narrative drive.

    It’s difficult to discuss the plot problems without giving away things readers have the right to discover for themselves so I will simply say the main plot is entirely unbelievable. Seriously, there are holes you could drive a fleet of trucks through and coincidences abound in precisely the way that does not happen. Not to mention the boat load of unexplained loose ends and the fact that the men are all caricatures of real people.

    Most annoyingly for me though is the didactic display of politics. At times the political overtones of the book do make for thought-provoking reading, such as when considering the implications of a relationship between China and impoverished African countries of the kind Manekll’s fictional (or not?) Chinese leadership proposes. But too often this is achieved via dull and inappropriate lecturing rather than as seamless parts of the narrative.

    I am also, for the record, more than a little tired of hearing that all capitalists are evil in human form.

    On balance though I’ve decided there is more to admire than disparage in The Man From Beijing. It is an ambitious project that doesn’t always succeed but it did keep me up for two nights running and it did make me think about the world in ways I hadn’t previously considered. Even more importantly, as someone who has whined at length about formulaic plots I applaud any effort to produce something different from the norm. In the end, I would rather read a novel that tries to do too much and fails partially than one which doesn’t try at all.

    If you are looking for traditional crime fiction of the procedural or whodunnit style then this is not the book for you. But if you’re looking for something that explores small human issues such as the nature of obsession, the angst of ageing and the lengths a person will, and will not, go to for their family alongside broad issues of humanity like colonialism (past and present) the decay of the modern justice system and the future of the global economy then I’d suggest you suspend your disbelief and give the book a go. At the very least it’ll make you think.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The story is 'Eh' but the end of the book has some interesting insights into current day China.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Good start, then it gets infinitely boring.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The opening scene to The Man From Beijing (aside from the judicial oath) is stunning. Mankell describes in haunting detail the travels of a lone wolf as it hungrily searches for prey. I won't spoil it by saying anything more. Suffice it to say this scene sets the tome for an ominous story. After visiting a wolf and wilderness center in Colorado my mind's eye can see this solitary wolf (and it's ever present hunger) with detailed clarity which makes Mankell's opening scene even more chilling.Henning Mankell is a master at writing mysteries. The Man From Beijing is no exception. The story starts with nineteen people, concentrated in one tiny Swedish village, brutally murdered. Most of the victims are elderly and the level of violence inflicted on them is unprecedented. Even their pets have been viciously attacked and killed. As the details of the massacre unfold the plot becomes multi-generational, spanning 150 years; and international, taking place in China, Zimbabwe, the United States and, of course, Sweden.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A really creative interesting story that takes place in Sweden, China, USA, and various African countries, meandering through both the present and the past. The 'main character' and narrative perspective switches around throughout the book (Swedish detective, Swedish judge, Chinese slave, Chinese business man, back to Swedish judge, Chinese political personality, back to Swedish judge, etc etc). This is perhaps a plot device, or has some grand meaning but I simply found that it made it difficult to keep focused on the story. As others have noted, there are various strange coincidences and occurrences that are never really explained, and this is a pity.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I've heard a lot about this author but had never read anything by him. Having just finished the third book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy I thought it was maybe time to find another Scandinavian mystery writer so I dived into this book. At first I thought he was a worthy replacement for Larsson but as the book went on there were some plot devices that didn't quite work and some loose ends that were never tied up. So I'm still looking for a Larsson read-alike.I really liked the main character in this book, Judge Birgitta Roslin. She seemed very human and likable. I'm sure I would have a lot to talk about with her if I met her in person. When she learns about a mass murder committed in a small village she realizes that her mother grew up with foster parents in that village. She has been told to take some time off work to get her blood pressure down so she decides to go to this village to see if it was her mother's foster parents who were killed. (This is one of the plot devices that didn't work for me. It seemed like her mother had a close relationship with her foster parents but she never took her daughter to visit them, even though she was widowed when Birgitta was very young. In her place I would have wanted to acquaint my daughter with the only relatives she had left.) In short order Judge Roslin discovers that a mysterious Chinese man visited the area the same night the murders took place and ate at a Chinese restaurant that has the same ribbons found in the woods near the crime scene. (Another plot device that was never explained was why the man took the ribbon and then left it in the woods.) However, the police don't follow up this lead because a local man confesses to the murder and then commits suicide. Judge Roslin follows the trail of the mysterious man back to Beijing where she is mugged and her bag is stolen. The Beijing police find her bag and return it to her but her room is searched while she is at police headquarters. Back home she is allowed to go back to work but keeps thinking about the murders; she even thinks her home has been searched. Her suspicions are heightened when the hotelkeeper where the man from Beijing stayed before calls to say he is back and is asking about her. (This really bothered me because either the man from Beijing knew where she lived and had searched her place or there was no home intrusion because he didn't know where she lived. It's hard to believe the man who could set in motion all the killings couldn't figure out where she lived but then why did he go to the hotel?) When the end is finally played out it seems inevitable and almost anticlimatic.The story kept me interested but the plotting flaws bothered me. I may try one of Mankell's Inspector Wallander books to see if I like that any better.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This odd tale veers from gory policy procedural, to historical drama, to international thriller, and ends as a kind of geopolitical allegory. It doesn't really hold together, but it's still a good read. Some problems: several main characters make decisions or take actions that don't make sense and aren't specifically reflective of their personalities. The story relies on a couple implausible coincidences, and introduces a couple minor but key characters at the wrong time in terms of the story's overall pacing (Hong Qiu's son, for example). At least one apparently significant detail of the mass murder that kicks off the book -- a detail referred to repeatedly during the course of the official police investigation -- is left unexplained and perhaps forgotten in the denouement. Still, the writing and translation are good, several of the characters are sympathetic, and the story builds and maintains suspense.It's hard to say much about the underlying themes of the book without spoiling the read, so it's perhaps simply worth noting that the twists of this book -- somewhat like those in Mankell's Wallander novel The White Lioness -- are a lot easier to swallow if a reader is aware of the author's long experience in southern Africa and his concern for its future.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In a small hamlet in northern Sweden eighteen elderly people and a young boy are found brutally murdered. There is nothing the police can isolate that gives then a direction for investigation. Judge Brigitta Roslin is interested in the outcome as one couple was her mother’s foster parents. She uncovers a diary written by a relative who worked on the construction of the transcontinental railroad across the United States. This creates a link to China which Roslin’s follows. The plot moves well from the 1890”s in the United States to the present in Sweden and China. Prior to reading “The Man from Beijing,” I read Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series and the stand alone “The Return of the Dancing Master.” The writing style of the beginning of “The Man from Beijing” and the other titles is similar; it is active, cohesive, with a good flow that allows the reader to move smoothly through the books. However in “The Man from Beijing” once Brigitta Roslin gets to China the writing becomes stilted, ponderous and lacks any sort of flow. It needs to be edited both for length as well as language in this section.I enjoyed the twists and turns of “The Man from Beijing” and recommend it and all books by Henning Mankell.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A mass murderer has struck a little village, killing 19 people from 3 families in one night. The only people in the village not killed are a couple and an elderly woman who don't share the surnames of the murdered families. As the police look long and hard for clues, Judge Birgitta Roslin, is shocked to discover one of the murdered couple were foster parents to her mother.She believes the police are looking in the wrong direction but can't seem to make them take the clues she's managed to uncover seriously. Alternately swinging over to the past and traveling from Sweden to China to America, the reader's given the insight into the murders, the murderer and the reasons for them without the whole story becoming clear to the police or Judge Birgitta.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    THE MAN FROM BEIJING is a standalone book from the author of the popular Kurt Wallender series, and if the discussions I've seen about it are any indication, it's guaranteed to polarise opinion.Set in Hesjövallen, where something very very bad has happened, police are called to the village by researcher, Karsten Höglin, who arrived in the town to find that this quiet, mostly deserted little village in Sweden is the scene of a massacre.Judge Brigitta Roslin has an unexpected connection to this place, when she discovers that two of the victims are her mother's adopted parents, but it is enough of a connection to give her an investigation to fill the emptiness she feels in her own life. Following the trail to China, in the face of police disinterest and her own families objections, she soons discovers an international connection and a nightmarish situation.Possibly part of the reason for some readers dissatisfaction with this book could be the rather tentative connection that Brigitta has to the crime, and her motivation for suddenly dropping everything and heading off in pursuit of a solution. The other objection could very well be the politics that are built into the story. Neither of these aspects presented much of an issue for me, and as a reader, I found Brigitta's actions and reactions were something I was happy to accept. The political viewpoint that Mankell presents was also not unexpected, and I felt not heavy-handed. I've got a number of standalone novels by Mankell salted away in MtTBR (aka the retirement fund), and if THE MAN FROM BEIJING is any hint, then I've got lots of books to look forward to.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A little too much wind, not enough story, or characters to care about. He had some interesting thoughts on China, Africa, and colonialism, but the novel never really came together, and I had a bit of a time even finishing it.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Henning Mankell is best known for having created fictional detective Kurt Wallander, a character I am familiar with via a couple of BBC adaptations of Mankell’s work. Wallander is typical of the genre, I suppose. He is another of those broken down, older detectives whose personal life is in ruins but who gamely carries on with catching the local bad guys. It is all very dark and moody, but I almost always take to that type of atmosphere and character and that is what I expected to get from The Man from Beijing.And, at first, that is what I got. The story opens at the scene of a spectacular mass murder in one of Sweden’s most isolated little villages. All but three of the village’s twenty-two inhabitants have been brutally slaughtered in just a few hours and police are struggling to identify either a motive for the murders or a suspect. When Judge Birgitta Roslin, who is on a two-week medical leave from the bench, realizes that this is the same village her mother was raised in, she decides to go there for a personal look. Once there, and sensing that the police investigation is headed in the wrong direction, Roslin begins her own - an investigation that leads her to believe that a Chinese assassin is responsible for the deaths.Butting heads with the local police, however, proves to be rather fruitless, so Roslin continues to nose around on her own. Her amateur investigation brings her all the way to China where her efforts attract the attention of the wrong people. Just happy to escape Beijing in one piece, Roslin returns to Sweden only to find that her Chinese troubles have followed her home.Henning Mankell had the makings of a snappy crime thriller on his hands if he had only stuck with this basic plot and characters. Even the long flashback dealing with San, a Chinaman kidnapped to work on America’s transcontinental railroad was interesting (and directly pertained to the plot), although, for the most part, very dryly narrated. By the time Mankell got back to present day Sweden, I was beginning to get a little hazy on some of the murder details and the Swedish characters. I managed to get myself back on track only to find that Mankell had a long, boring harangue in store for his readers. The author managed to move the side plot along eventually, but along the way he had one of his main characters read segments of political speeches that in real time were said to last four or five hours. As I listened to Mankell defend the likes of Chairman Mao and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, I began to understand how the character’s captive audience must have felt.This is a good book gone very, very bad. It reads more as an excuse for Mankell to preach his own leftist political views than as a book to be enjoyed by mystery/thriller fans. Had The Man from Beijing been properly edited, it could have been a gripping police procedural about a stunning crime. As is, it is a tremendous bore about a stunning crime.Rated at: 1.5
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'm looking forward to reading more of his books. Very well done.