Sidetracked

Product Description
A string of gruesome murders show the obvious markings of a demented serial killer, and Swedens Detective Wallander is frantic to find him before he strikes again. Sidetracked is a compelling mystery enhanced by keen social awareness.
From the Back Cover
“Presents Mankell at his best…if you haven’t bought
Sidetracked, do so ASAP” –
Los Angeles Times Book Review
“[I]t is Wallander’s voice . . . that captures us.” –
New York Times Book Review
“Mankell joins the worthy ranks of such past masters as Georges Simenon [and] Nicholas Freeling.” –
The Wall Street Journal“Full of emotion yet cleanly written, apparently straightforward yet fraught with intriguing revelations, Mankell’s latest mystery is strongly recommended.” –
Library Journal
From Publishers Weekly
Told from the perspectives of both cop and criminal, Mankell's third Kurt Wallander mystery revolves around the veteran Swedish inspector's search for a savage serial killer who scalps his victims after delivering a fatal hatchet blow. The novel opens as Wallander is called to a farmer's field, where he helplessly witnesses a teenage girl's self-immolation. The suicide unsettles the inspector, who can't understand why someone so young would kill herself. As the police try to identify the young woman, the serial killer's first victim, a former justice minister, is discovered on a beach in a wealthy neighborhood. Three more people are found murdered and scalped, and other signs of violence suggest that the perpetrator is becoming increasingly agitated. Following standard procedure, Wallander and his crew try to link the four victims, all male, a difficult task because their lives never seem to have intersected. Using American profiling methods as well as his own intuition, Wallander struggles to make headway in the case. What he doesn't consider, and what readers know, is that the murderer isn't a man but a boy, who hopes to revive his catatonic sister by the ritual presentation of the scalps. Mankell's meticulously detailed descriptions of the inspector's investigationAand his often lyrical portrayal of Wallander's struggle to rearrange his thought processes in order to catch the criminalAare masterful. The author's treatment of modern themes such as juvenile killers and broken families adds richness to what is essentially a straightforward police procedural. But above all, the novel stands out for its nuanced evocation of even the peripheral characters. Winner of Sweden's 1997 Best Crime Novel of the Year, this is another terrific offering from the talented Mankell.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Henning Mankell (1948-2015) was Sweden's most-read author worldwide. His novels, which include the bestselling Kurt Wallander mysteries, have been translated into thirty-seven languages with more than thirty million copies in print worldwide. He has received the Crime Writers' Association's Macallan Gold Dagger and the German Tolerance Prize and has been a three-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Book Prize. He divided his time between Sweden and Mozambique, where he worked as a director at Teatro Avenida.
From Booklist
"The violence that previously was concentrated in the large cities had also reached his own police district. . . . The world had both shrunk and expanded at the same time." That mantra is being chanted by fictional cops all across Europe, but none with more insistence than Kurt Wallander of Ystad, Sweden. In this third Wallander adventure to be translated into English, the overworked inspector is confronted by a serial killer who slaughters and scalps his victims with a hatchet. Torn between the enormity of this case and his perpetual family problems, Wallander slogs on, using the very tedium of the investigative process to insulate himself from the horrors he faces. Mankell effectively contrasts Wallander's crisp attention to procedural