One Step Behind

Sixth in the Kurt Wallander series. On Midsummer's Eve, three role-playing teens dressed in eighteenth-century garb are shot in a secluded Swedish meadow. When one of Inspector Kurt Wallander's most trusted colleagues - someone whose help he hoped to rely on to solve the crime - also turns up dead, Wallander knows the murders are related. But with his only clue a picture of a woman no one in Sweden seems to know, he can't begin to imagine how. Reeling from his own father's death and facing his own deteriorating health, Wallander tracks the lethal progress of the killer. Locked in a desperate effort to catch him before he strikes again, Wallander always seems to be just one step behind.

Internationally acclaimed author Henning Mankell has written eight novels and a collection of short stories featuring Kurt Wallander. The books have been published in thirty-three countries and consistently top the bestseller lists in Europe, receiving major literary prizes (including Great Britain’s Gold Dagger in 2000) and generating numerous international film and television adaptations. He has also published many other novels for children, young people, and adults, and is one of Sweden’s most frequently performed dramatists. He has spent many years in Africa, where a number of his novels are set. Born in 1948, Mankell grew up in the Swedish village of Sveg. He now divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where he works as a director at Teatro Avenida.