Author:Henning Mankell
'Wallander is among the very best fictional crimebusters' Daily Telegraph
One frozen January morning at 5am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he believes 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, both 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, it unleashes a tide of racism.
Wallander's life is a shambles. His wife has left him, his daughter refuses to speak to him, and even his ageing father barely tolerates him. He works tirelessly, eats badly, and drinks his nights away. But now Wallander must forget his troubles and throw himself into a battle against time and against mounting racial hatred.
Discover the first novel in the addictive Wallander series.
'Mankell is one of the most ingenious crime writers around. Highly recommended' Observer
'Mankell is in the first division of crime writing' The Times
An exquisite novel of mesmerizing depth and suspense
—— Margo Kaufman , Los Angeles TimesMankell is one of the most ingenious crime writers around. Highly recommended
—— ObserverMankell is in the first division of crime writing
—— The TimesAn excellent thriller
—— IndependentBy far the best writer of police mysteries today
—— Michael OndaatjeThe novels become a compulsion - one reads them all
—— Daily TelegraphThe most original crime writer of our time
—— SpectatorJames Ellroy is a genius: the finest American crime writer since Raymond Chandler, and one of the most readable experimental writers in the world
—— Times Literary SupplementWithout him and his crime fiction, there's no David Peace or The Sopranos or Ian Rankin or The Wire or the work of countless writers and film makers who saw a different way of doing things when they first cracked the spine on an Ellroy
—— GQBurnside is an accomplished and careful writer. And this is a beautiful book, compelling and strange
—— Margaret Reynolds , The TimesUnsettling, hauntingly memorable tale
—— Sunday TimesWritten with deceptive elegance, riddled with gaps and non sequiturs and a clever travesty of several genres, this is a disturbing, provocative book'
—— Guardian
[A Summer of Drowning] brings an eerie glow to the colours and sounds, flora and foodstuffs of the far north