Henning Mankell

The murder of a farming couple in Sweden unleashes a wave of xenophobia when it is learned that the woman's dying words were "foreigner." The case is given to Inspector Kurt Wallender, a lover of opera and booze. Part crime story, part look at the attitude of Swedes to immigrants.

International bestseller: Kurt Wallander and his daughter join forces to hunt for a ritual killer in this “gripping, beautifully orchestrated” mystery (The New York Times Book Review).
 
Linda Wallander is bored. Having just graduated from the police academy, she’s waiting to start work with the Ystad police and move into her own apartment. In the meantime, she’s staying with her father and, like...

Hudiksvall, January 2006, police find eighteen people massacred in a small village. They think it's the work of a mad man, but Birgitta and August believe they were killed by the same person who killed their mother.

On Midsummer's Eve, three friends gather in a secluded meadow in Sweden. In the still-sun-lit northern night, they don costumes and begin to role play. But an uninvited guest soon brings their performance to a gruesome conclusion. His approach is careful; his aim is perfect. Three bullets, three corpses. The murderer then carefully photographs the grisly tableau. Meanwhile, the Ystad police station is experiencing a summer lull. Inspector Kurt Wallander...

The master of Scandinavian crime fiction spins a dark tale of passion and deceit set during World War I: “A memorable and shocking psychological study” (Publishers Weekly).
 
October, 1914. Swedish naval officer Lars Tobiasson-Svartman is charged with a secret mission to take depth readings around the Stockholm archipelago. In the course of his work, he lands on the rocky isle of Halsskär. It seems utterly...

Fredrik Welin is a reclusive ex-surgeon living alone on a tiny island in the north of Sweden. His only companions are a pair of aged pets, and the only society callers to his living room are ants that are transforming his table into an enormous anthill. Every morning, the loner goes out to the frozen lake, cuts a hole in the ice, and then plunges himself into the freezing water to remind himself that he is still alive. Four women enter his life: Harriet,...

Jesper Humlin is a poet of middling acclaim who is saddled by his underwhelming book sales, an exasperated girlfriend, a demanding mother, and a rapidly fading tan. His boy-wonder stockbroker has squandered Humlin's investments, and his editor, who says he must write a crime novel to survive, begins to pitch and promote the nonexistent book despite Humlin's emphatic refusals. Then, when he travels to Gothenburg to give a reading, he finds himself...

Arriving in newly independent Zambia in the hopes of fulfilling a friend's missionary dream, Hans Olofson endeavors to make Africa his home while struggling with such past demons as his father's alcoholism and a friend's accident.

In this case, it is Detective Kurt Wallander's obstinate desire to see that justice is done that 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 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

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"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...