I think these are getting better as he goes along. In this one the title "character" only appears on a very few pages, but colors the entire story. He is one of the extremely wealthy and powerful - with business interests all over the world. He lives in a castle near Ystad and has ordered a number of murders in the area.
Wallander is, after eighteen months, still recovering from the breakdown he suffered after killing one of the lesser bad guys in the last book. He has decided to resign from the police force, but when a friend of his is murdered, goes back on active duty.
The Big Bad rests securely behind the walls of his castle and the walls of the reputation as a philanthropist he has purchased, but there are the shadow men who are always present. This definitely plays out as a David and Goliath number, but Wallander/David is not playing a lone hand. This is the first book in which the entire team seems to gel and perform cohesively to solve the crime. Of course, Wallander gets the big scene at the end - and sees the smiling man with the smile wiped from his face, but the entire team was required to find the lines that solved the crime.
And the big event!! Baiba Liepa - the widow of the Latvian policeman in The Dogs of Riga - for whom Wallander has been pining and to whom he has been writing for the last two books - has arrived to spend Christmas with him.
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