Faceless Killers

Introducing Police Inspector Kurt Wallander: the hard-drinking, opera-loving, down-at-heal divorcee, and incomparable cop.

One frozen January morning at 5am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he expects is a routine call out. When he reaches the isolated farmhouse he discovers a bloodbath. An old man has been tortured and beaten to death , his wife lies barely alive beside his shattered body, victims of a violence beyond reason. The woman supplies Wallander with his only clue: the perpetrators may have been foreign. When this is leaked to the press, racial hatred is unleashed.

Kurt Wallander is a senior police officer at Ystad, a small town in the wind-lashed Swedish province of Skane. His life is a shambles. His wife has left him, his daughter refuses to speak to him, even his ageing father barely tolerates him. He works tirelessly, eats badly and drinks his nights away in a lonely, neglected flat. But now winter tightens its grip on Ystad, and Wallander, his tenacious efforts closely monitored by the tough-minded (and disarmingly attractive) district attorney Anette Brolin, must forget his troubles, and throw himself into a battle against time and against mounting xenophobia.

Inspector Wallander is a brilliant creation, and 'Faceless Killers' is the first in a series of critically-acclaimed crime stories. What has made Mankell's thrillers bestsellers across Europe is an exceptional blend of sheer narrative force with a compelling and humane portrait of a not always agreeable, not often lucky, crusader for justice.