What does this to do with Swedish author Henning Mankell or his crime mystery Faceless Killers? This is a book response, not a parental rant against the strange world of technology. Kurt Wallander, Mankell's frumpy, grumpy Swedish crime investigator and I have something in common. We are both in danger of becoming culturally irrelevant, maybe extinct; both of us fear this looming prospect.
In the prologue of Henning Mankell's The Return of the Dancing Master, I thought I recognized a character from a recent TV movie called 'The Last Hangman', featuring the life and times of Albert Pierrepoint, played by Timothy Spall. I was wrong about the novel character's exact identity; Mankell's hangman was a fellow called Davenport. As for the connection between the prologue and the rest of The Return of the Dancing Master, my movie association did function as a helpful template in discovering one of Mankell's crucial themes, the need for impartial justice.