A review by liberrydude
Kennedy's Brain by Henning Mankell

2.0

Very different from his other mysteries and I knew that coming in. I really didn't like this novel. The suspense is there initially but then it starts to fade. This book is about a topic near and dear to the author's heart-Africa and its exploitation. The protagonist, for whom you have some empathy, slowly starts to come across as a judgmental, cold, obsessive woman who might know much about the Bronze Age but not much about her family or the real world out there. Her quest is a whirlwind of travel from Greece to Sweden to Spain to Australia to Mozambique. The travel, her circumstances, and her increasing anxiety exact a toll on her. The title is intriguing but is deceptive and totally irrelevant to the plot. There is no resolution and it just ends. The reader is left frustrated and angry. Perhaps that's how Mankell wanted you to feel? But anger for the exploitation of Africans not anger for having wasted your time.