Faceless Killers

We live as if we were in mourning for a lost paradise, he thought. As if we longed for the car thieves and safe-crackers of the old days, who doffed their caps and behaved like gentlemen when we came to take them in. But those days have irrevocably vanished, and nor is it certain that they were as idyllic as we remember them.

from Faceless Killers
by Henning Mankell
translated from the Swedish by Steven T. Murray
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1997