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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.

A Kurt Wallander Mystery: The Fifth Woman
Sidetracked
The Man Who Smiled
The White Lioness
The Dogs of Riga
Faceless Killers

Recommended Reading Order

  1. Faceless Killers

    • 280 pages
    • 10 hours of reading

    ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • The mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander • From the dean of Scandinavian noir, the first riveting installment in the internationally bestselling and universally acclaimed Kurt Wallander series. It was a senselessly violent crime: on a cold night in a remote Swedish farmhouse an elderly farmer is bludgeoned to death, and his wife is left to die with a noose around her neck. And as if this didn’t present enough problems for the Ystad police Inspector Kurt Wallander, the dying woman’s last word is foreign, leaving the police the one tangible clue they have–and in the process, the match that could inflame Sweden’s already smoldering anti-immigrant sentiments. Unlike the situation with his ex-wife, his estranged daughter, or the beautiful but married young prosecuter who has peaked his interest, in this case, Wallander finds a problem he can handle. He quickly becomes obsessed with solving the crime before the already tense situation explodes, but soon comes to realize that it will require all his reserves of energy and dedication to solve.

    Faceless Killers1
    3.8

  2. The Dogs of Riga

    • 326 pages
    • 12 hours of reading

    It is winter, 1991. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team at the Ystad police station in Skane, southern Sweden, receive an anonymous tip-off. A few days later what they have been warned of comes to pass: a life raft is washed up on a beach. In it are two men, dressed in expensive suits, shot dead

    The Dogs of Riga2
    3.8

  3. The White Lioness

    • 500 pages
    • 18 hours of reading

    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

    • 336 pages
    • 12 hours of reading

    In this riveting Henning Mankell thriller, a disillusioned Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself in a deep personal and professional crisis after killing a man in the line of duty. After almost a year of sick leave, he hits rock bottom and resolves to quit the police force for good. Against his better judgment Wallander stays on the force when unforeseen circumstances compel him to investigate the murder of a friend. While working closely with Ann-Britt Hoglund, the department’s first female detective, he stumbles on a horrific world where human body parts are traded like stock, and just as he comes close to uncovering the truth, the same shadowy threats responsible for the murders close in on Wallander himself.

    The Man Who Smiled4
    3.9

  5. Sidetracked

    • 420 pages
    • 15 hours of reading

    Kurt Wallander is back, and this time he must discover why a girl has doused herself in petrol and burned herself to death, and solve the mystery behind the savage murder of a former government minister.

    Sidetracked5
    4.1

  6. A Kurt Wallander Mystery: The Fifth Woman

    • 437 pages
    • 16 hours of reading

    Inspector Kurt Wallander is home from an idyllic holiday in Rome, full of energy and plans for the future. But when he investigates the disappearence of an elderly birdwatcher he discovers a gruesome and meticulously planned murder - a body impaled in a trap of sharpened bamboo poles. Then another man is reported missing. And once again Wallander's life is on hold as he and his team work tirelessly to find a link between the series of vicious murders. Forever battling to make sense of the violence of modern Sweden, Wallander leads a massive investigation to uncover a brutal killer.

    A Kurt Wallander Mystery: 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

    In woodland outside Ystad, the police make a horrific discovery: a severed head, and hands locked together in an attitude of prayer. A Bible lies at the victim's side, the pages marked with scribbled corrections.

    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

    • 392 pages
    • 14 hours of reading

    The missing piece of the internationally bestselling Kurt Wallander mystery series: the story of Kurt Wallander's beginnings. • The mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander Revealing a side of Wallander that we have never seen, the long stories collected in The Pyramid are vintage Mankell. Here, we see Wallander on his homicide first case as a twenty-one-year-old patrolman, as a young father facing unexpected danger on Christmas Eve, as a middle-aged detective with his marriage on the brink, as a newly separated investigator solving the brutal murder of a local photographer, and finally as a veteran detective, with his signature methodical and instinctive work style, discovering unexpected connections between a downed plane and the assassination of a pair of spinster sisters. In these five riveting tales we watch Kurt Wallander come into his own not only as a detective but as a human being

    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