Before the Frost

by Henning Mankell

Book Overview

The mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander - From the dean of Scandinavian noir, the ninth riveting installment in the internationally bestselling and universally acclaimed Kurt Wallander series. Here he is joined on the force by his daughter Linda.

In this latest atmospheric thriller, Kurt Wallander and his daughter Linda join forces to search for a religious fanatic on a murder...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400095816
• ISBN13: 9781400095810
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.1" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Great mystery, great characters

I have read nearly all of Mankell's novels and this is one of the very best - the character development is great and the story consistently surprises you. Mankell is tops and he does not resort to overly detailed descriptions of horrific events, but rather focuses on his characters' reactions which is much more effective. If you are new to his writing, you are in for a treat - read them all.

Like father, like daughter

Chief Inspector Kurt Wallender of the Ystad police force is back, but he's not the protagonist this time. That role goes to his daughter, Linda, who was often in the background of the previous novels in this excellent series. Nearly thirty years old, having attempted careers in furniture restoring and the theater, she's finally settled on becoming a cop. Personality-wise, she's very much like her father -- which isn't always a good thing -- but she also seems to have his basic investigative instincts. However, being just out of the academy -- she doesn't even officially start her job for some weeks yet -- she's also prone to all the rookie errors as she becomes involved in the disappearance of a childhood friend who has only recently come back into her life. Dad is working on the brutal murder by beheading of an inoffensive old lady in a forest shack, and (naturally) the two cases creep closer together until everyone is embroiled in a fundamentalist Christian terrorist plot, the roots of which go back to Jonestown. (Mankell has a nice sense of irony, setting all of this in the weeks preceding 9/11.) Linda is an interesting character and I look forward to watching her professional development. Oh, and Stefan Lindman (from The Return of the Dancing Master) has transferred to Ystad, so you know Linda will be seeing some action in her personal life, too.

Wallander Series Jumps a Generation

This novel begins with a short opening chapter in which a nameless narrator describes how he escaped from the bloodbath that culminated Jim Jones People's Temple cult in Jamestown, Guyana in 1978. The action then switches to southern Sweden in late August 2001. Inspector Wallander has to investigate an odd report of burning swans on a local lake. Soon afterwards in another strange incident a calf is burnt alive. Meanwhile Wallander's daughter, Linda, is in town, recently having completed her training to be a policewoman and now at something of a loose end until she starts up officially as one of her father's colleagues. Her old schoolfriend Anna surprises her with the news that her father, who had disappeared when she was a very small girl, has reappeared. Then Anna herself vanishes and Linda, unable to convince her father to take the matter very seriously, goes off to investigate by herself. After eight instalments of Wallander Mankell seemed to get a bit fed up and gave us the engaging `Return of the Dancing Master' in which a new protagonist Stefan Lindman goes chasing fascists around rather more northerly parts of Sweden. Here we come back to the familiar territory of Ystad but the focus shifts somewhat to the next generation. Indeed `Dancing Master's apparent departure from the series is now worked in as here is Lindman newly transferred to Ystad after recovering from his cancer and maybe Linda starting to fancy him a bit... The story resembles `Dancing Master' again in the way the main protagonist's life is complicated by a lack of clear official status. In `Dancing Master' Lindman was on sick leave, away from his home turf, offering the local cops some outside assistance they weren't particularly keen to receive. Here Linda is a rookie whose first day as a proper cop is imminent but hasn't quite arrived. As we now expect with Mankell, it's a great read, intriguing and beautifully plotted with believable vivid characters. As again is usual for him the story is perhaps a bit to grandiose in its large global political themes to be altogether credibly foisted on this tiny rural police precinct. As always it's all such terrific fun we forgive him instantly and look forward keenly to the next instalment. (Though I did feel that Mankell's studied timing of his story of murderous religious fanaticism to end neatly on September 11th, 2001 was decidedly contrived and most definitely overdoing it.)

The Wallander torch is being passed - 4 1/2 stars actually

Henning Mankell has introduced a new protagonist in his series of police procedural novels, Linda Wallander, daughter of Ystad chief inspector Kurt. Linda, previously a peripheral character in other books, has just graduated from the police academy and will soon commence her first tour of duty in her father's station in Ystad. She has moved in with her dad waiting for her new apartment to be ready. Since both Wallanders have similar quick tempers and irritable personalities this creates an explosive family dynamic which makes for interesting reading. Mankell also resurrects Stefan Lindman, the police inspector in "The Return of the Dancing Master". He has transfered from the northern town of Boras to become a colleague of Kurt Wallander in Ystad. At about the time Linda moves back to Ystad, a curious crime is reported. Someone had poured gasoline on a flock of swans and incinerated them. This is soon followed by a case of arson of a pet shop. Linda decides to renew a friendship with an old childhood buddy Anna Westin. She is pursing a medical degree and splits time between an apartment in Ystad and one in a neighboring city of Lund. Linda and Anna rekindle their affair but Anna suddenly and inexplicably disappears. Just prior to the disappearance she had claimed to have seen her long lost father Erik who had vanished 24 years ago. Linda becomes alarmed and visits and questions Anna's mom Henrietta and becomes even more concerned after that conversation. Linda tries to mobilize her dad Kurt to help discover the wherabouts of Anna. He resists until a mysterious fire in a church reveals an apparent ritualistic killing of a young American woman. This crime seems connected to both the previous burnings and Anna's disappearance and has religious sect overtones. We find out that these occurrences seem to be related to an initially unnamed survivor of the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana whose identity is later revealed. Mankell as usual composes an original and well conceived plot. He falls short however in one area where he usually excels. His character development of Linda was shallower than those of his main characters in previous works.

terrific Kurt Wallender Swedish police procedural

No one is more proud of Linda Wallender graduating from the Swedish Police Academy than her dad Chief Inspector Kurt Wallender. Linda looks forward to begin work at the Ystad Police Department and ultimately to find a flat of her own having lived with dear old dad until now. Dad is eager to mentor his daughter and she is eager to learn from him how to run an investigation though her patience runs thin when he becomes protectively fatherly. Still while Kurt struggles to stop a religious extremist seemingly setting up a mass murder, Linda investigates on her own. Dad frets over her safety because of the disappearance of her friend Anna Westin, who vanished shortly after her father reentered her life after he went away and did not returning for over two decades. As Wallander the younger seeks clues from a variety of sources including Anna's journal, another young woman named in the journal, vanishes. The case has the Wallenders arguing and putting up a FIREWALL between them as the teacher-pupil relationship falls into a more adversarial situation with each feeling ONE STEP BEHIND the other in pursuit of FACELESS KILLERS. They must cooperate if they are to uncover the dark goings on as their two cases have merged. The Kurt Wallender Swedish police procedurals has been some of the best the sub-genre has had to offer over the last few years to include novels translated like these or originally in English. The latest story BEFORE THE FROST takes an intriguing spin as Kurt shares top billing with a chip off the old block his own daughter Linda. The two subplots merge effortlessly so that the audience receives another winning cop tale from talented Henning Mankell. Harriet Klausner