After the Fire by Henning Mankell

Translated by Marlaine Delargy

Vintage Books, 416 pages, $16.95 (c2015, U.S. ed. 2017)

Although Swedish author Henning Mankell, R.I.P., produced one of the mystery world’s most treasured series, starring Inspector Kurt Wallander, “After the Fire” has far less to recommend it to the criminous reading public. It is the last book Mankell wrote and it finally has been translated into English.

Last seen in “The Italian Shoes” (c2006), ex-surgeon Fredrik Welin again pops up as the vehicle through which Mankell discusses life, death, love, and fear. You would have thought from that first book that Welin would have changed somehow. But no. Perhaps he is more introspective, but that doesn’t appear necessarily to be a good thing.

Seventy-year-old Welin has isolated himself on his grandparents’ island in a Swedish archipelago. He lives in the house they lived in. They were sociable and linked in life to other inhabitants in the area. There were parties and friendships. Welin, on the other hand, puts the cur in curmudgeon. He belittles and avoids his neighbors. Even when he likes someone, he keeps his distance. Although he feels his loneliness and the icy breath of death, he alternately says he is not afraid and he is very afraid. My bet is on the latter. He has done very little to ameliorate his loneliness.

Then his house bursts into flames. He barely escapes with only his nightclothes and mismatched boots. Then it appears the house fire was set by an arsonist. Did Welin, in a fit of madness or mental breakdown, burn down his own house? There is very little to like about Welin, and it was my opinion from the start that this was the case. Mankell has not created a book of psychological suspense, however. He has developed the psychology of isolation and the arsonist angle is mildly suspenseful, but it is by no means — so get it out of your head immediately — a crime novel. Bummer.

Although Welin has many opportunities to discover what disturbs his lightly estranged daughter, to whom he was introduced as an adult in “The Italian Shoes,” he hesitates and is lost. Although he imagines romance with a decades younger woman, he vacillates and fumbles. I have to say, given the current climate of revelations about sexual predators, Welin comes across as creepy. Speaking of creepy, the good doc — who committed malpractice, resulting in his retirement — skulks around, looking at people through windows, rummages through private papers, breaks into houses to look around, and bears often unwarranted suspicions against his neighbors.

I’ve read the raves about this work, but I found the book irritating. Mankell has produced a work about a man who struggles to find love without being lovable, to create a family although he has had little practice or past concern about one, to be well-regarded although he barely masks his arrogance. Well done, Henning Mankell, if that was what you intended. But that doesn’t make for the kind of book I find intriguing.