Smiling for no reason

Oh and I forgot to mention that Misfortune is beautifully illustrated with several lithographs and the initial letter of each chapter is a wonderful little picture that reflects the story and you can buy one of these from Mr Stace's website. Joy!

Of course, after this, I couldn't just stop reading. Forever. This would have been more satisfying I think.

Instead I went and read another thriller by Swedish national treasure Henning Mankell. This was The Man Who Smiled.

It has quite a nice cover, sadly disfigured with a big lie or at least odd opinion on it where The Times inexpicably claims this is "one of his best". I found it really odd, beyond cultural differences and the translator not being a native English speaker. It was just clumsy with some really dumb leaps of logic in the plot.

It focuses on Kurt Wallander's recovery from post traumatic stress from shooting someone (in a previous book) by investigating the death of a couple of lawyers. Weirdly on his first day back at the office he finds he's very very sweaty so he shuts the door to his office, strips down and dries himself on the curtains. Ewww! Maybe I should have stopped reading at that point