Henning Mankell

When Kurt Wallander is called into the case of the disappearance of a retired naval officer, coincidentally his daughter's future father-in-law, he becomes embroiled in a story of Cold War espionage.

"Ystad, Sweden. A man stops at an ATM during his evening walk and inexplicably falls dead to the ground. Two teenage girls brutally murder a taxi driver. They are quickly apprehended, shocking local policemen with their complete lack of remorse. One girl escapes police custody and disappears without a trace."--Jacket.

Convinced that her beloved twenty-eight-year-old son was killed in spite of a police ruling that he committed suicide, archaeologist Louise Cantor travels throughout the world in search of answers.

The story of the Swedish detective’s beginnings, told in five gripping short mysteries: “An indispensable chapter to the saga” (Booklist Online).
 
Here are the stories that trace, chronologically, Kurt Wallander’s growth from a rookie cop into a young father and then a middle-aged divorcé, illuminating how he became a first-rate detective and highlighting new facets of the character who...

"Henning Mankell's last novel about an aging man whose quiet, solitary life on an isolated island off the coast of Sweden is turned upside down when his house catches fire. Fredrik Welin is a former surgeon who retired in disgrace decades earlier to a tiny island on which he is the only resident. He has a daughter he rarely sees and his mailman Jansson is the closest thing he has to a friend, and to an adversary. He is perfectly content to live out...

Arriving in Cape Town in the 1870s, Hans Bengler adopts a young San orphan he names Daniel and takes him back to Sweden, where Daniel must adjust to his new surroundings while dealing with nightmares of his dead parents calling him home.

When retired policeman Herbert Molin is found brutally slaughtered on his remote farm in Sweden, police find strange tracks in the snow as if someone has been practicing the tango. Stefan Lindman, a young police officer recently diagnosed with cancer, decides to investigate the murder of his former colleague but is soon enmeshed in a mystifying case with no witnesses and no apparent motives. Terrified of the disease that could take his life, Lindman...

On the rooftop of a theater in an African port, Nelio, a ten year old boy--"a leader of street kids, rumored to be a healer and a prophet and possessed of a strangely ancient wisdom--"tells his unforgettable story over the course of nine nights.

Now almost fourteen, Joel becomes a local hero to his small Swedish town when he saves an old man from freezing to death in the woods.

A volume of short works features investigator Kurt Wallander as a young patrolman on his first case, a new father facing unexpected danger on Christmas Eve, and an experienced detective solving a variety of murders.