One Step Behind - Softcover

Mankell, Henning

4.1

21,020 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099448874 ISBN 13: 9780099448877

Publisher: Vintage Crime, 2003

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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.

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From the Inside Flap:

Sixth in the Kurt Wallander series.
On Midsummer's Eve, three role-playing teens dressed in eighteenth-century garb are shot in a secluded Swedish meadow. When one of Inspector Kurt Wallander's most trusted colleagues-someone whose help he hoped to rely on to solve the crime-also turns up dead, Wallander knows the murders are related. But with his only clue a picture of a woman no one in Sweden seems to know, he can't begin to imagine how. Reeling from his own father's death and facing his own deteriorating health, Wallander tracks the lethal progress of the killer. Locked in a desperate effort to catch him before he strikes again, Wallander always seems to be just one step behind.

From the Back Cover:

“Lyrical, meticulous, and stunningly suspenseful.” –St. Petersburg Times

“Typical of the dense, intricate intelligence that Mankell brings to detection and crime writing.” –The Washington Post Book World

“Satisfying in a way that has less to do with the wonders of forensic science than with the pure pleasure of rational thought.” –The New York Times

“It is not hard to see why the Wallander books have made a particular impact.” —Times Literary Supplement

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