Kurt Wallander

It was a crime of senseless violence. On a cold night in a remote Swedish farmhouse, an elderly farmer was bludgeoned to death, his wife left to die with a noose around her neck. As if this didn't present enough problems for Ystad police inspector Kurt Wallander, the dying woman's last word, his only tangible clue, was "foreign." If publicized, it could be the match that would inflame Sweden's already smoldering anti-immigrant sentiments. In this case, unlike the situation with his ex-wife, his estranged daughter, or the young prosecutor who has piqued his interest, Wallander finds a problem he can handle. He quickly becomes obsessed with solving the crime before the already tense situation explodes-though it will require all of his talent to do so.

In this case, only Wallander's obstinate desire to see that justice is done brings the truth to light. On the Swedish coastline, two bodies, victims of grisly torture and cold execution, are discovered in a life raft. With no witnesses, no motives, and no crime scene, Detective Kurt Wallander is frustrated and uncertain he has the ability to solve a case as mysterious as it is heinous. But after the victims are traced to the Baltic state of Latvia, a country gripped by the upheaval of Soviet disintegration, Major Liepa of the Riga police takes over the investigation. Thinking his work done, Wallander slips into the routine once more, until he is called suddenly to Riga and plunged into an alien world in which shadows are everywhere, everything is watched, and old regimes will do anything to stay alive.

The execution-style murder of a Swedish housewife looks like a simple case, except that there is no obvious suspect. Wallander follows a lead on a determined stalker, but when his alibi turns out to be airtight, Wallander begins to realize that what seemed a simple crime of passion is actually far more complex and dangerous. Eventually, his search uncovers an assassination plot, and Wallander soon finds himself in a tangle with the secret police and with a ruthless foreign agent. A riveting tale of international intrigue with compelling insights into the sinister side of modern life, The White Lioness keeps you on the knife edge of suspense.

A disillusioned Inspector Kurt Wallander is thrown back into the fray as both hunter and hunted in this fourth adventure from Sweden's master of crime and mystery. Crestfallen, dejected, and spiraling into an alcohol-fueled depression after killing a man in the line of duty, Inspector Wallander had made up his mind to quit the police force for good. But when an old acquaintance, a solicitor, seeks Wallander's help and later turns up dead, Wallander realizes that he was wrong not to listen. Warily, he returns to work to head the case. A rookie female detective has joined the force in his absence, and he adopts the role of mentor to her as they fight to unravel the mystery-but the same merciless individuals responsible for the murders are closing in.

Detective Kurt Wallander is called to a nearby rapeseed field where a teenage girl has been loitering all day long. He arrives just in time to watch her douse herself in gasoline and set herself aflame. The next day he is called to a beach where Sweden's former minister of justice has been axed to death and scalped. The murder has the obvious markings of a demented serial killer, and Wallander is frantic to find him before he strikes again. But his investigation is beset with obstacles: a department distracted by the threat of cutbacks and the frivolity of World Cup soccer, a tenuous relationship with a widow, and the unshakably haunting preoccupation with the girl who set herself on fire. Fascinating and astute, Sidetracked is a compelling mystery enhanced by keen social awareness.

In an African convent, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are brutally murdered, and the death of the unknown woman is covered up by the local police. A year later in Sweden, Inspector Kurt Wallander is baffled and appalled by two strange murders. Holger Eriksson, a retired car dealer and bird watcher, is impaled on sharpened bamboo poles in a ditch behind his secluded home, while the body of a missing florist is discovered strangled and tied to a tree. The only clues Wallander has to go on are a skull, a diary, and a photo of three men. What ensues is a case that will test Wallander's strength and patience, for in order to solve these murders he will need to uncover their elusive connection to the earlier unsolved murder in Africa of the fifth woman.

On Midsummer's Eve, three role-playing teens dressed in eighteenth-century garb are shot in a secluded Swedish meadow. When one of Inspector Kurt Wallander's most trusted colleagues, someone whose help he hoped to rely on to solve the crime, also turns up dead, Wallander knows the murders are related. But with his only clue a picture of a woman no one in Sweden seems to know, he can't begin to imagine how. Reeling from his father's death and facing his own deteriorating health, Wallander tracks the lethal progress of the killer. Locked in a desperate effort to catch him before he strikes again, Wallander always seems to be just one step behind.

A body is found at an ATM, the apparent victim of heart attack. Then two teenage girls are arrested for the brutal murder of a cab driver. The girls confess to the crime, showing no remorse whatsoever. Two open-and-shut cases. At first, these incidents seem to have nothing in common. But as Wallander delves deeper into the mystery of why the girls murdered the cab driver, he begins to unravel a plot much more complicated than he initially suspected. The two cases become one and lead to a conspiracy that stretches far beyond the borders of Sweden.

This collection of five stories traces the growth of Swedish Inspector Kurt Wallander into a first-rate detective, from rookie cop to young father to middle-aged divorcé, illuminating new facets of a now-canonical character. In "Wallander's First Case," the twenty-one-year-old patrolman's first homicide case involves his next-door neighbor, seemingly dead by his own hand. Wallander is a young father confronting an unexpected threat on Christmas Eve in "The Man with the Mask." In "The Man on the Beach," he is on the brink of middle age and troubled by a distant wife as he unravels why a lonely man was poisoned. Newly separated in "The Death of the Photographer," he investigates the murder of the local photographer and discovers some well concealed secrets. In "The Pyramid" he is the veteran detective uncovering connections between a downed plane and the assassination of two elderly sisters. Over the course of these five stories, Wallander comes into his own as a murder detective, defined by his simultaneously methodical and instinctive work, even as he finds himself increasingly haunted from witnessing the worst aspects of an atomized society. Written from the unique perspective of an author looking back upon his own creation to discover his origins, these mysteries are vintage Mankell and essential reading for all Wallander fans. The Pyramid is a wonderful display of Mankell's virtuosic powers as an acknowledged master of the police procedural.