Before the Frost

Starred review from January 31, 2005
In Mankell's stellar 10th Wallander mystery, the generational torch passes from father Kurt to his equally stubborn daughter, Linda, who recently finished her police training and is anxiously awaiting her first day on the job. But a seemingly random series of events jump-starts her career and enmeshes her and her father, along with Stefan Lindman, the detective featured in The Return of the Dancing Master
(2004), in a case with global ramifications. The book begins on a bizarrely disquieting note: someone is setting animals—wild swans, a farmer's calf—on fire. Then Linda begins investigating, unofficially, the disappearance of her friend Anna Westin. And the stakes for everyone are raised when Linda finds the ritualistically mutilated corpse of Birgitta Medberg, a local cultural historian. A complex (but wholly credible) narrative connects these events with a terrorist plot led by a survivor of the 1978 mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. As always with Mankell, the mystery is connected to larger issues—the decline of Swedish civility, of course, but also the danger of religious fundamentalism (the events are set in the weeks before 9/11)—but polemics never trumps suspense in this extraordinarily compelling drama.

Inspector Kurt Wallander's daughter, Linda, has finished police college and is about to begin her career with the Ystad police. When her friend, Anna, disappears, Linda becomes entangled in the investigation, unofficially working alongside her brilliant, irascible father. Cassandra Campbell's performance is an excellent fit for Swedish mystery master Henning Mankell's brooding, complex characters. Through subtle vocal shifts, Campbell captures the love and antagonism between father and daughter, the confusion of affections and jealousies between friends, the grim Swedish landscape, and the depressive personalities inhabiting Mankell's world. The translation is occasionally awkward, yet Campbell's skill keeps the mystery moving as gruesome animal killings, murder, and religious fanaticism take center stage. Mankell fans won't be disappointed in this first of a promised three-part Linda Wallander series. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine