The Fifth Woman: Kurt Wallander

Four nuns and a fifth woman, a visitor to Africa, are killed in a savage night-time attack. Months later, in Sweden, the news of the unexplained tragedy sets off a cruel vengeance for these killings. Inspector Kurt Wallander is home from an idyllic holiday in Rome, full of energy and plans for the future. Autumn settles over the province of Skane, and Wallander prays the winter will be peaceful. But when he investigates the disappearance of an elderly bird-watcher 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 close knit team work tirelessly to find a link between the series of viscous murders. Making progress not through revelation but through dogged police work, and forever battling to make sense of the violence of modern Sweden, Wallander will lead a massive investigation to find a killer whose crimes are the product of the new realities that make him despair.

Fifth in the Kurt Wallander series.
In an African convent, four nuns and a unidentified fifth woman are brutally murdered--the death of the unknown woman covered up by the local police. A year later in Sweden, Inspector Kurt Wallander is baffled and appalled by two murders. Holger Eriksson, a retired car dealer and bird watcher, is impaled on sharpened bamboo poles in a ditch behind his secluded home, and the body of a missing florist is discovered--strangled and tied to a tree. The only clues Wallander has to go on are a skull, a diary, and a photo of three men. What ensues is a case that will test Wallander's strength and patience, because in order to discover the reason behind these murders, he will also need to uncover the elusive connection between these deaths and the earlier unsolved murder in Africa of the fifth woman.