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.
As his personal life falls apart, Swedish Police Inspector Kurt Wallander is confronted with a hideous crime which has devastating repercussions. An elderly couple are brutally murdered in their remote farmhouse and the suspicion falls on the immigrant community.
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
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.
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.
Midsummer approaches, and Inspector Kurt Wallander prepares for a holiday with the new woman in his life, hopeful that his wayward daughter and his ageing father will cope without him. But his restful summer plans are thrown into disarray when a teenage girl 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 desperate 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. WINNER OF THE CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION GOLD DAGGER
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.
It is Midsummer's Eve, three young friends gather in a wood. In the still-sunlit Scandanavian dusk, they don costumes joyfully to enact - or so it appears to an unseen observer - a kind of masque. The hidden watcher soon brings their performance to an end. His approach is careful; his aim is perfect. Three bullets, three corpses. The murderer then carefully photographs the grisly tableau. The Ystad police station meanwhile is experiencing a summer lull, indeed Inspector Wallander is at last at liberty to attend to - albeit reluctantly - his deteriorating health, but his peace of mind is shattered when one of his colleagues is murdered. An unknown killer, seen by no-one, is on the loose, and the police's only lead is a photograph of three dead young people in costume. Forced to dig more deeply than he would have wanted into the personal life of one of his colleagues, Wallander's investigation reveals something none of his team could ever have imagined. However, they remain tantalisingly, terrifyingly one step behind the lethal progress of a killer Wallander would have to suppose was deranged if his methods were not so meticulous and his victims so clinically targeted.
Inspector Kurt Wallander begins to suspect a connection between a series of crimes--the murder of a taxi driver by two teenage girls, the escape of one of the culprits, a power blackout, and a grisly discovery at the malfunctioning power station
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.
Kurt Wallander's life uncovers something unexpected in the garden - the skeleton of a middle-aged woman. As police officers comb the property, Wallander attempts to get his new life back on course by finding the woman's killer with the aid of his daughter, Linda.
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.
When Kurt Wallander first appeared in Faceless Killers back in 1990, he was a senior police officer, just turned forty, with his life in a mess. His wife had left him, his father barely acknowledged him; he ate badly and drank alone at night. The Pyramid chronicles the events that led him to such a place. We see him in the early years, doing hours on the beat whilst trying to solve a murder off-duty; witness the beginnings of his fragile relationship with Mona, the woman he has his heart set on marrying; and learn the reason behind his difficulties with his father. These thrilling tales provide a fascinating insight into Wallander's character, and demand to be read in one sitting. From the stabbing of a neighbour in 1969 to a light aircraft accident in 1989, every story is a vital piece of the Wallander series, showing Mankell at the top of his game. Featuring an introduction from the author, The Pyramid is an essential read for all fans of Kurt Wallander.
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.
