Explore the latest books of this year!
Bookbot

Kurt Wallander Series

The Kurt Wallander series, created by author Henning Mankell, follows detective Kurt Wallander as he grapples with dark and complex crimes in the picturesque Swedish town of Ystad. The series explores not only the investigations themselves but also Wallander's personal struggles and moral dilemmas. Alongside thrilling plots, it reflects social and political issues of contemporary times. Wallander becomes a symbol of the modern detective facing not only crime but also his own demons.

The Fifth Woman
Sidetracked
The Man who Smiled
The White Lioness
The Dogs of Riga
Faceless Killers

Recommended Reading Order

  1. Faceless Killers

    • 298 pages
    • 11 hours of reading

    One frozen January morning at 5am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he believes is a routine call-out. When he reaches the isolated farmhouse he discovers a bloodbath. An old man has been tortured and beaten to death, his wife lies barely alive beside his shattered body, both victims of a violence beyond reason. The woman supplies Wallander with his only clue: the perpetrators may have been foreign. When this is leaked to the press, it unleashes racial hatred. Kurt Wallander is a senior police officer. His life is a shambles. His wife has left him, his daughter refuses to speak to him, and even his aging father barely tolerates him. He works tirelessly, eats badly, and drinks his night away in a lonely, neglected flat. But now, with winter tightening and his activities being monitored by a tough-minded district attorney, Wallander must forget his troubles and throw himself into a battle against time and against mounting xenophobia. (back cover)

    Faceless Killers1
    3.8

  2. The Dogs of Riga

    Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team receive an anonymous tip-off. A few days later a life raft is washed up on a beach. In it are two men, dressed in expensive suits, shot dead. The dead men were criminals, victims of what seems to have been a gangland hit. But what appears to be an open-and-shut case soon takes on a far more sinister aspect.

    The Dogs of Riga2
    3.8

  3. The White Lioness

    CRIME & MYSTERY. In peaceful Southern Sweden, Louise Akerblom, an estate agent, pillar of the Methodist church, wife and mother, disappears. There is no explanation and no motive. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team are called in to investigate. As Inspector Wallander is introduced to this missing person's case, he has a gut feeling that the victim will never be found alive. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela has made his long walk to freedom, setting in train the country's painful journey towards the end of Apartheid. Wallander and his colleagues find themselves caught up in a complex web involving renegade members of South Africa's secret service and a former KGB agent, all of whom are set upon halting Mandela's rise to power. In an increasingly globalised world, Wallander and his team are faced with international terrorism which knows no frontiers - they must prevent a hideous crime that means to dam the tide of history.

    The White Lioness3
    3.8

  4. The Man who Smiled

    • 448 pages
    • 16 hours of reading

    After killing a man in the line of duty, Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself spiralling into an alcohol-fuelled depression. He has just decided to leave the police when an old friend approaches him for help investigating his father s suspicious death.

    The Man who Smiled4
    3.9

  5. Sidetracked

    Midsummer approaches, and Wallander prepares for a holiday with the new woman in his life, hopeful that his wayward daughter and his ageing father will cope without hi,. Bit his summer is ruined when a fir l commits suicide before his eyes, and a former minister of justice is butchered in the first of a series of apparently motiveless murders. Wallander's hunt for the girl's identity and his furious pursuit of a killer who scalps his victims will throw him and those he loves most into mortal danger.

    Sidetracked5
    4.1

  6. The Fifth Woman

    • 583 pages
    • 21 hours of reading

    Four nuns and a fifth woman, a visitor to Africa, are killed in a savage night-time attack. Months later in Sweden, the news of the unexplained tragedy sets off a cruel vengeance for these killings.Inspector Kurt Wallander is home from an idyllic holida

    The Fifth Woman6
    4.1

  7. One Step Behind

    "It is Midsummer's Eve. Three young friends meet in a wood to act out an elaborate masque. But, unknown to them, they are being watched. Each is killed by a single bullet. Soon afterwards, one of Inspector Wallander's colleagues is found murdered. Is it the same killer, and what could the connection be? In this investigation Wallander is always, tantalisingly, one step behind."

    One Step Behind7
    4.1

  8. Firewall

    • 544 pages
    • 20 hours of reading

    Stopping to get money from a cash machine one evening, a man inexplicably falls to the ground: dead. A taxi dirver is brutally murdered by two teenaged girls. Quickly apprehended they appal local policemen with their total lack of remorse. One girl escapes police custody and disappears without trace. Soon afterwards a blackout covers half the country. When an engineer arrives at the malfunctioning power station, he makes a grisly discovery. Inspector Kurt Wallander is sure that these events must be linked - somehow. Hampered by the discovery of betrayals in his own team, lonely and frustrated, Wallander begins to lose conviction in his role as a detective. The search for answers leads Wallander dangerously close to a shadowy group of anarchic terrorists, hidden within the anonymity of cyberspace. Somehow these criminals seem always to know the police's next move. Wallander finds himself fighting to outsmart them In their gripping police procedural about our increasing vulnerability in the modern digitalised world.

    Firewall8
    4.0

  9. Before the Frost

    • 384 pages
    • 14 hours of reading

    The internationally acclaimed crime writer introduces a new, young heroine with a familiar father. Linda Wallander is bored. Just graduated from the police academy, she is waiting to start work at the Ystad police station and move into her own apartment. Meantime, she is living with her father and, like fathers and daughters everywhere, they are driving each other crazy. Nor will they be able to escape each other when she moves out. Her father is Inspector Kurt Wallander, a veteran of the Ystad police force, whom she will have to work alongside. Linda's boredom doesn't last long. Soon she is embroiled in the case of her childhood friend Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared. As the investigation proceeds, she makes a few rookie mistakes. They are understandable, but they are also life-threatening. And as the case her father is working on dovetails with her own, something far more calculated and dangerous than either could have imagined begins to emerge. Already an international bestseller, Before the Frost inaugurates Henning Mankell's new mystery series about Linda Wallander, and also features Stefan Lindman of The Return of the Dancing Master.

    Before the Frost9
    3.9

  10. An Event in Autumn

    • 169 pages
    • 6 hours of reading

    The eleventh riveting installment in the mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander • Wallander is "one of the most impressive creations in crime fiction today.... An old-fashioned moral force and sense of disquiet of the sort rarely found in contemporary crime fiction." —The Guardian After nearly thirty years in the same job, Inspector Kurt Wallander is tired, restless, and itching to make a change. He is taken with a certain old farmhouse, perfectly situated in a quiet countryside with a charming, overgrown garden. There he finds the skeletal hand of a corpse in a shallow grave. Wallander’s investigation takes him deep into the history of the house and the land, until finally the shocking truth about a long-buried secret is brought to light. Includes an afterword by the author.

    An Event in Autumn10
    3.7

  11. The Troubled Man

    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.

    The Troubled Man11
    3.8

Related books

  • The Pyramid

    • 496 pages
    • 18 hours of reading

    Detective Wallander is haunted by the spectre of a murder he was unable to prevent as a young policeman. Years after the event, the daughter of the murder victim, now a heroin addict, dies of an overdose. A distressed Wallander is assigned to investigate the crash of a light airplane and a detonated armour piercing shell is found in the wreckage. A few days later, two elderly sisters are killed in an explosion in a sewing supplies shop. Traces of an advanced explosive are found in the burnt-out shop and evidence soon mounts to indicate that both events are tied to a showdown between two rival narcotics gangs.

    The Pyramid
    3.9

  • The Return of the Dancing Master

    • 520 pages
    • 19 hours of reading

    Herbert Molin, A Retired Police Officer, Is Living Alone In A Remote Cottage In The Vast Forests Of Northern Sweden. He Has Two Obsessions: One Is The Tango And The Other Is A Conviction That He Is Being Hunted, Constantly Pursued By 'Demons'. He Has No Close Friends, No Close Neighbours, And By The Time His Body Is Eventually Found, Molin Is Almost Unrecognisable. Lindman, A Police Officer On Extended Sick Leave, Hears Of The Death Of His Former Colleague And, To Take His Mind Off His Own Problems, Decides To Involve Himself In The Case. What He Discovers, To His Horror And Disbelief, Is A Network Of Evil Almost Unimaginable In This Remote District, And One Which Seems Impossible To Link To Molin'S Death.

    The Return of the Dancing Master
    3.9