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Sidetracked (Kurt Wallander Series #5)

Name: Sidetracked (Kurt Wallander Series #5)
Author: Henning Mankell
ISBN: 9781400031566

by Henning Mankell, Steven T. Murray

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Overview

Fourth in the Kurt Wallander series.

In the award-winning Sidetracked, Kurt Wallander is called to a nearby rapeseed field where a teenage girl has been loitering all day long. He arrives just in time to watch her douse herself in gasoline and set herself aflame. The next day he is called to a beach where Sweden’s former Minister of Justice has been axed to death and scalped. The murder has the obvious markings of a demented serial killer, and Wallander is frantic to find him before he strikes again. But his investigation is beset with a handful of obstacles—a department distracted by the threat of impending cutbacks and the frivolity of World Cup soccer, a tenuous long-distance relationship with a murdered policeman’s widow, and the unshakably haunting preoccupation with the young girl who set herself on fire. Fascinating and astute, Sidetracked is a compelling mystery enhanced by keen social awareness.

Synopsis

Detective Kurt Wallander is called to a nearby rapeseed field where a teenage girl has been loitering all day long. He arrives just in time to watch her douse herself in gasoline and set herself aflame. The next day he is called to a beach where Sweden s former minister of justice has been axed to death and scalped. The murder has the obvious markings of a demented serial killer, and Wallander is frantic to find him before he strikes again. But his investigation is beset with obstacles: a department distracted by the threat of cutbacks and the frivolity of World Cup soccer, a tenuous relationship with a widow, and the unshakably haunting preoccupation with the girl who set herself on fire.

Fascinating and astute, Sidetracked is a compelling mystery enhanced by keen social awareness.

Library Journal

A young girl spends a day almost catatonic in an isolated farm field, then immolates herself. Sweden's retired minister of justice--a man with a pornographic interest in young girls--takes his usual evening walk on the beach and meets a murderer's axe. With these possibly connected cases on his plate, series policeman Kurt Wallander (Faceless Killers, LJ 12/96) and his team interrupt their personal agendas to identify the girl, expose unsavory personal/political secrets, and deal with the subsequent connected murder of an art dealer. Full of emotion yet cleanly written, apparently straightforward yet fraught with intriguing revelations, Mankell's latest mystery is strongly recommended.

About the Author, Henning Mankell

Best known for his series of police procedurals featuring the adventures of Swedish detective Kurt Wallander -- selling over 10 million copies worldwide -- Henning Mankell has become a mystery master garnering critical acclaim in both the U.K. and U.S.

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Editorials

From the Publisher

“Presents Mankell at his best…if you haven’t bought Sidetracked, do so ASAP” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“[I]t is Wallander’s voice . . . that captures us.” —New York Times Book Review

“Mankell joins the worthy ranks of such past masters as Georges Simenon [and] Nicholas Freeling.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Full of emotion yet cleanly written, apparently straightforward yet fraught with intriguing revelations, Mankell’s latest mystery is strongly recommended.” —Library Journal

Library Journal

NY Times Book Review

Brooding on...the "great loneliness" that attends the breakdown of modern society, Mankell's philosophical hero vows to make it up to the coming generation...

Kirkus Reviews

Under ordinary circumstances, the suicide of an unknown teenager would get Inspector Kurt Wallander's undivided attention, especially because she poured gasoline over her head and set herself aflame right in front of the horrified, helpless Wallander. But the mystery of the girl's motive for killing herself is soon upstaged by the activities of one of Sweden's rare serial killers. The crafty murderer, calling himself Geronimo, donning war paint, and traveling by moped from victim to victim, has scalped the former minister of justice and a shady art-dealer. A psychological profiler who's been called in to work with Wallander's team remarks sagely that it would be easier to get a fix on the victim if only there were more victims. But the next victim, when he obligingly turns up, confounds the pattern the first two seemed to have established. Meanwhile, as Wallander and his crew work feverishly to track down leads, the body count rises, some of them victims of suicide or heart failure. (Mankell recalls P.D. James in his ability to relate homicide to the more general curse of mortality.) And Wallander's worries about his father's Alzheimer's, and his plans for vacationing with his sweetheart Baiba Karlis, are buried beneath the pile of scalps. Though the punishing length and glacial pace of glum Wallander's third (The White Lioness, 1998, etc.) may put off casual visitors, connoisseurs of the police procedural will tear into this installment like the seven-course banquet it is.