Introducing Police Inspector Kurt Wallander: the hard-drinking, opera-loving, down-at-heal divorcee, and incomparable cop.
One frozen January morning at 5am, Police Inspector Wallander responds to 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, and suspicion falls on the immigrant community.
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 mounting xenophobia.
