Before the Frost ( Innan frosten) In the only episode in series one based on a book, Linda has just joined the Ystad force and helps her father with an animal torture case that becomes the prelude to the ritual murder of humans. The Darkness ( Mörkret) One beautiful summer day, a child is found abandoned in a parked car. Her father is nowhere to be found and her mother, committed to an insane asylum, is not much help to Linda, who must take charge when Kurt falls ill. Tengo que confesar que no está entre los mejores de este magnífico escritor (siempre según mi opinión, por supuesto). Pero me han gustado, y mucho, su desarrollo en Letonia, y el trasfondo político en el que estaban sumergidos los países del este a la caída del Muro de Berlín y del colapso de la Unión Soviética. Mankell lo escribió por aquella época, por lo que el relato denota la frescura del momento, sin saber aún qué pasaría con este y otros países satélites de Moscú. Aquí la investigación en sí es lo de menos. Lo realmente interesante está en revivir las experiencias del comisario en una Letonia que, para Wallander, era un gran misterio. A menudo compara las condiciones de vida letonas con las de su propio país, mucho más avanzado en todos los sentidos, y aún así, termina por cogerle cariño a una Riga (la capital) decrépita y decadente, donde la corrupción y el espionaje al vecino campan a sus anchas. What specifics does the novel reveal about how police investigations are conducted? About the strained relations between the police, the press, and the government? About the connection between sudden insight and the dogged search for clues?

Driven by a desire to change the world and to fight against racism and nationalism, Mankell devoted much of his time to working with charities in Africa, including SOS Children’s Villages and PLAN International, where he was also director of the Teatro Avenida in Maputo. In 2008, the University of St Andrews conferred Henning Mankell with an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in recognition of his major contribution to literature and to the practical exercise of conscience.Faceless Killers, the first novel in Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series, is a gripping, gritty crime thriller that has inspired a generation of Nordic Noir writers and influenced many contemporary authors across the globe. It is no exaggeration when I say that Henning Mankell is by far one of the most successful writers in Scandinavia, especially in his own country of Sweden. The Nordic weather, cold to the bones, drives its populace indoors for much of the year where cuddling up to read the latest in crime fiction is a national pastime.

Most Americans have a rather idyllic view of life in Sweden. In what ways does Faceless Killers contradict that view? Is it disconcerting to learn that Sweden suffers many of the same problems—drugs, crime, racism—that beset the United States? About this Author

Henning Mankell

In what ways is Faceless Killers surprising? What is unusual about its crimes and the manner in which they are solved? Why would Henning Mankell choose to make the novel about two apparently disconnected crimes, one motivated by greed and another by racial hatred? How do you think the refugees are portrayed? And why? Esta situación tan confusa de esos momentos está presente en la novela y el mismo Mankell lo explica al final, una vez ya publicada, cuando los países bálticos consiguieron la independencia de la URSS. The main crime to be solved is the brutal torture and murder of an elderly farm couple who lived in an isolated house. The only initial clue is that the female victim said the word ‘foreigner’ just before she died. This gets leaked to the press and starts a frenzy of anti-immigrant feelings among the neo-Nazi types of Sweden who want immigration to cease and foreigners to be deported. Wallander and his team have to investigate these additional crimes as these Nazis murder one man, injure others, and set fire to a local immigrant refugee camp. The Secret ( Hemligheten) A young boy’s murder on an abandoned farm opens up the world of child pornography and pedophilia and strikes a personal chord with Stefan, whose personal struggles force him to relinquish the case to Kurt and Linda.

We soon discover that a gruesome murder has taken place in a farm, with only a neighbouring farmhouse, outside the sleepy village of Lunnarp. A few days later, he's informed that the Latvian detective has been murdered, and their authorities want Wallander to come assist with the case, as he was the last person who spent time with the murdered detective. Dogs of Riga, the second in the Kurt Wallander series places Wallander outside of his comfort zone: in Riga, capital of Latvia and without the presence of his familiar Swedish colleagues to whom we were introduced in the first of the series. In 1992, Faceless Killers won the first ever Glass Key award, given to crime writers from the Nordic countries.

Mankell, Henning (2009). "Chapter 4". The Troubled Man. London: Random House - Vintage. ISBN 978-0-099-54840-9.