Before the Frost

In Before the Frost we meet Kurt Wallander's daughter Linda, now a police as well.

On the evening of August 21, 2001, the Ystad police receive a strange call: a man claims to have seen burning swans over the Marebo lake. Kurt Wallander drives to the lake to examine what has happened. He is accompanied by his daughter Linda who a couple of weeks later is to start service with the police in Ystad. They find nothing. But a few days later a shocked farmer calls and reports that someone has set fire to his one of his young bulls. Everything points to a tormenter of animals being the sadist behind these gruesome deeds.

A few days later a female ethnogeographer, who is mapping the ancient roads of Skåne, disappears without a trace and so does shortly thereafter one of Linda's best female friends. The tracks point straight into the jungle of Guyana and to Christian visions of doomsday. And Linda's police career is jeopardised before it has even started.

Before the Frost
Original title: Innan frosten, Leopard Förlag, Stockholm, June 2002. Bestseller No. 1 in Sweden.

Rights sold

• Germany: Paul Zsolnay Verlag - Summer 2003
• Italy: Mondadori - Spring 2003
• Norway: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag - Fall 2002
• Denmark: Gyldendal - Spring 2003
• Finland: Otava
• Holland: de Geus
• France: Seuil
• UK: Harvill
• USA: The New Press
• Spain: Tusquets
• Catalan: Tusquets
• Russia: Inostranka

Reviews

Excerpts from Swedish reviews:

SUGGESTIVE DESCRIPTION OF FANATISM: It was a surprise, not only to Kurt Wallander, when his daughter Linda announced that she intended to join the police ... But it was also a risky surprise: Would Henning Mankell after nine novels and a volume of short stories about his commissioner be able to write about a new Wallander generation in uniform? INNAN FROSTEN proves that he was ... INNAN FROSTEN is an excellent novel. It confirms that Henning Mankell is in a class of his own among Swedish crimewriters ... and Linda Wallander can become a very special and strong character. (Svenska Dagbladet)

INNAN FROSTEN, Kurt Wallander's return as his daughter's tutor - tormented by the demons of resignation and bad conscience - becomes a journey for both of them through the heart of darkness, a journey through a landscape where Henning Mankell with great suggestive power lets the evil of fanatism destroy the minds of normal, gentle people ... With Kurt Wallander we saw a Sweden changing. In order to tell about this country, this virtual, merciless, soulless kingdom, where the only reality is pain and fear, Mankell - and we - need the young and therefore changeable Linda who like her father is convinced that the deeper you dig, the further you advance. (Aftonbladet)

LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: Not a word about terrorists, or suicide bombers or Islam. But on September 11, 2001, the Ystad police gather around television after a couple of highly dramatic weeks when they have succeeded in tracking down a group of religious fanatics who are blowing up the cathedrals of Sweden. Before that people have been killed, a woman has been decapitated, and flyings swans burnt to death ... INNAN FROSTEN marks something new... (GöteborgsPosten)

Updated: January 29, 2005.