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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.