Before the Frost: A Linda Wallander Mystery

From Publishers Weekly
In Mankell's stellar 10th Wallander mystery, the generational torch passes from father Kurt to his equally stubborn daughter, Linda, who recently finished her police training and is anxiously awaiting her first day on the job. But a seemingly random series of events jump-starts her career and enmeshes her and her father, along with Stefan Lindman, the detective featured in The Return of the Dancing Master (2004), in a case with global ramifications. The book begins on a bizarrely disquieting note: someone is setting animals--wild swans, a farmer's calf--on fire. Then Linda begins investigating, unofficially, the disappearance of her friend Anna Westin. And the stakes for everyone are raised when Linda finds the ritualistically mutilated corpse of Birgitta Medberg, a local cultural historian. A complex (but wholly credible) narrative connects these events with a terrorist plot led by a survivor of the 1978 mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. As always with Mankell, the mystery is connected to larger issues--the decline of Swedish civility, of course, but also the danger of religious fundamentalism (the events are set in the weeks before 9/11)--but polemics never trumps suspense in this extraordinarily compelling drama. (Feb. 8) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Crime novelists always struggle with what to do when a successful series turns repetitive. Perhaps the wisest tack is to introduce new characters into the familiar milieu. K. C. Constantine and John Harvey have used this approach effectively, and now Mankell joins the group. Even before his superb Kurt Wallander series, starring the world-weary Swedish police detective, had lost much momentum, Mankell turned his focus to a younger cop, Stefan Lindman (The Dancing Master [BKL Mr 1 04]); now he goes one step further by turning the star billing over to Wallander's daughter, Linda, a rookie patrolman beginning work at her father's cop shop in Ystad. But even before Linda shows up for her first day, she finds herself involved in one of Kurt's investigations. When the disappearance of Linda's former best friend appears linked to a grisly murder, father and daughter must quickly learn to interact as colleagues. This is a fine thriller on its own--the plot's tentacles stretch back to cult leader Jim Jones--but Mankell's real triumph is to stay focused on Linda, a rookie cop whose expertise and worldview are entirely different from her father's, while at the same time revealing new and fascinating aspects of the curmudgeonly Kurt's character. Crime writers eager to inject new energy into a series without losing the core of their books' appeal need only consult Mankell. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Michael Ondaatje
For me, Henning Mankell is by far the best writer of police mysteries today.

Book Description
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.

About the Author
Internationally acclaimed author Henning Mankell has written thirty-three novels, including nine Kurt Wallander mysteries. Mankell divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where he works as a director at Teatro Avenida.


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Series mainstay Kurt Wallender makes room for his daughter. Feisty Linda Wallender, fresh out of Sweden's police academy, is ready to inaugurate her own series. Not that her papa (The Return of the Dancing Master, 2004, etc.) does a total second banana as the Ystad PD tries to cope with a religious fanatic bent on mass murder. Far from it: The chief inspector yields only half the stage in his offspring's debut, since he still has a lot to teach his clever child how to run a high-profile investigation. To her credit, she's eager to benefit from Kurt's hard-won experience-except, of course, when his paternal officiousness irritates her so thoroughly that she'd like to bean him with an ashtray, as she does at one point. The screw begins turning for the father-daughter sleuthing team when Anna Westin, a friend of Linda's, suddenly vanishes. Shortly thereafter, there's another disappearance: a woman whose name Linda finds in Anna's journal. What links the two women? And is there a connection between their evaporations, and the inexplicable reappearance of Anna's father after a 24-year walkabout? There is indeed-a tricky, murky one, drawing the Wallenders into a crucible that tests their relationship emotionally and puts them at odds professionally. Though Mankell's novels can be painfully slow, they're never without their virtues, and this case is redeemed by the electricity between a father and daughter too much alike.


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