{"product_id":"before-the-frost-isbn-9781400095810","title":"Before the Frost","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama \u003ci\u003eYoung Wallander \u003cb\u003e•\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eFrom 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.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this latest atmospheric thriller, Kurt Wallander and his daughter Linda join forces to search for a religious fanatic on a murder spree. Just graduated from the police academy, Linda Wallander returns to Skane to join the police force, and she already shows all the hallmarks of her father--the maverick approach, the flaring temper. Before she even starts work she becomes embroiled in the case of her childhood friend Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared. As the case her father is working on dovetails with her own, something far more dangerous than either could have imagined begins to emerge. They soon find themselves forced to confront a group of extremists bent on punishing the world's sinners.“Mankell is a master of the traditional arts of the crime novel, narrative pacing and suspense.”  --\u003ci\u003ePittsburgh Post-Gazette\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An arresting story by an arresting writer … [Mankell] understands and probes the underside of everyday living – in an elegant and artful way.… He is able to look loneliness square in the eye. The result is writing that walks a line between ephemeral and everlasting.” \u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Powerful…. Thoroughly engaging…. Amazingly human characters…. It’s a testament to Mankell’s skill with plot that the story gets more and more urgent as he transforms a series of small mysteries into a much larger thriller…. Mankell [is] a master storyteller.” \u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I salivate with anticipation at the prospect of more from the pen of Mankell, for he is one of the finest \u003cbr\u003eof his genre – a Scandinavian Ian Rankin with a passion for exploring the dark side of human nature…. Mankell builds the tension with care and, as ever, his characters are cleverly rounded…. \u003cbr\u003eA masterpiece of atmospheric creation.” \u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eGlasgow Herald\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Few of this genre’s writers – few of any genre’s writers – have been able to balance the ordinary and the grotesque with such literary dash and page-turning brio…. Mankell’s atmospherics … give you metaphysical goose bumps.” \u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eBoston Herald\u003c\/i\u003eHenning Mankell is the internatinally acclaimed, bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander novels.  Mankell's novels have been translated into forty-five languages and have sold more than forty million copies worldwide. He was the first winner of the Ripper Award and also received the Glass Key and the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger, among other awards. His Kurt Wallander mysteries have been adapted into a PBS television series starring Kenneth Branagh. During his life, Mankell divided his time between Sweden and Mozambique, where he was artistic director of the Teatro Avenida in Maputo. He died in 2015.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e.chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The wind picked up shortly after 9.00 on the evening of August 21, 2001. In  a valley to the south of the Rommele Hills, small waves were rippling across  the surface of Marebo Lake. The man waiting in the shadows beside the water  stretched out his hand to discover the direction of the wind. Virtually due  south, he found to his satisfaction. He had chosen the right spot to put out  food to attract the creatures he would soon be sacrificing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He sat on the rock where he had spread out a sweater against the chill. It  was a new moon and no light penetrated the thick layer of clouds. Dark  enough for catching eels. That's what my Swedish playmate used to say when I  was growing up. The eels start their migration in August. That's when they  bump into the fishermen's traps and wander the length of the trap. And then  the trap slams shut.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His ears, always alert, picked up the sound of a car passing some distance  away. Apart from that there was nothing. He took out his torch and directed  the beam over the shoreline and water. He could tell that they were  approaching. He spotted at least two white patches against the dark water.  Soon there would be more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He switched off the light and tested his mind--exactingly trained--by  thinking of the time. Three minutes past nine, he thought. Then he raised  his wrist and checked the display. Three minutes past nine--he was right, of  course. In another 30 minutes it would all be over. He had learned that  humans were not alone in their need for regularity. Wild creatures could  even be taught to respect time. It had taken him three months of patience  and deliberation to prepare for tonight's sacrifice. He had made himself  their friend.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He switched on the torch again. There were more white patches, and they were  coming nearer to the shore. Briefly he lit up the tempting meal of broken  bread crusts that he had set out on the ground, as well as the two petrol  containers. He switched off the light and waited.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    When the time came, he did exactly as he had planned. The swans had reached  the shore and were pecking at the pieces of bread he had put out for them,  oblivious of his presence or by now simply used to him. He set the torch  aside and put on his night-vision goggles. There were six swans, three  couples. Two were lying down while the rest were cleaning their feathers or  still searching for bread.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Now. He got up, took a can in each hand and splashed the swans with petrol.  Before they had a chance to fly away, he spread what remained in each of the  cans and set light to a clump of dried grass among the swans. The burning  petrol caught one swan and then all of them. In their agony, their wings on  fire, they tried to fly away over the lake, but one by one plunged into the  water like fireballs. He tried to fix the sight and sound of them in his  memory; both the burning, screeching birds in the air and the image of  hissing, smoking wings as they crashed into the lake. Their dying screams  sound like broken trumpets, he thought. That's how I will remember them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The whole thing was over in less than a minute. He was very pleased. It had  gone according to plan, an auspicious beginning for what was to come.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He tossed the petrol cans into the water, tucked his jumper into the  backpack and shone the torch around the place to be sure he had left nothing  behind. When he was convinced he had remembered everything, he took a mobile  phone from his coat pocket. He had bought the phone in Copenhagen a few days  before.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    When someone answered, he asked to be connected to the police. The  conversation was brief. Then he threw the phone into the lake, put on his  backpack and walked away into the night.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The wind was blowing from the east now and was growing stronger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    chapter 2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was the end of August and Linda Caroline Wallander wondered if there were  any traits that she and her father had in common which yet remained to be  discovered, even though she was almost 30 years old and ought to know who  she was by this time. She had asked her father, had even tried to press him  on it, but he seemed genuinely puzzled by her questions and brushed them  aside, saying that she more resembled her grandfather. These  \"who-am-I-like?\" conversations, as she called them, sometimes ended in  fierce arguments. They kindled quickly, but they also died away almost at  once. She forgot about most of them and supposed that he did too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    There had been one argument this summer which she had not been able to  forget. It had been nothing really. They had been discussing their differing  memories of a holiday they took to the island of Bornholm when she was  little. For Linda there was more than this episode at stake; it was as if  through reclaiming this memory she was on the verge of gaining access to a  much larger part of her early life. She had been six, maybe seven years old,  and both Mona and her father had been there. The idiotic argument had begun  over whether or not it had been windy that day. Her father claimed she had  been seasick and had thrown up all over his jacket, but Linda remembered the  sea as blue and perfectly calm. They had only ever taken this one trip to  Bornholm so it couldn't have been a case of their having mixed up several  trips. Her mother had never liked boat journeys and her father was surprised  she had agreed to this one holiday to Bornholm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    That evening, after the argument had ended, Linda had had trouble falling  asleep. She was due to start working at the Ystad police station in two  months. She had graduated from the police training college in Stockholm and  would have much rather started working right away, but here she was with  nothing to do all summer and her father couldn't keep her company since he  had used up most of his holiday allowance in May. That was when he thought  he had bought a house and would need extra time for moving. He had the house  under contract. It was in Svarte, just south of the main road, right next to  the sea. But the vendor changed her mind at the last minute. Perhaps because  she couldn't stand the thought of entrusting her carefully tended roses and  rhododendron bushes to a man who talked only about where he was going to put  the kennel--when he finally bought a dog. She broke the contract and her  father's agent suggested he ask for compensation, but he chose not to. The  whole episode was already over in his mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He hunted for another house that cold and windy summer, but either they were  too expensive or just not the house he had been dreaming of all those years  in the flat on Mariagatan. He stayed on in the flat and asked himself if he  was ever really going to move. When Linda graduated from the police training  college, he drove up to Stockholm and helped her move her things to Ystad.  She had arranged to rent a flat starting in September. Until then she could  have her old room back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    They got on each other's nerves almost immediately. Linda was impatient to  start working and accused her father of not pulling strings hard enough at  the station to get her a temporary position. He said he had taken the matter  up with Chief Lisa Holgersson. She would have welcomed the extra manpower,  but there was nothing in the budget for additional staff. Linda would not be  able to start until September 10, however much they might have wanted her to  start sooner.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Linda spent the interval getting to know again two old school friends. One  day she ran into Zeba, or \"Zebra\" as they used to call her. She had dyed her  black hair red and also cut it short so Linda had not recognised her at  first. Zeba's family came from Iran, and she and Linda had been in the same  class until secondary school. When they bumped into each other on the street  this July, Zeba had been pushing a toddler in a pushchair. They had gone to  a café and had a coffee.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Zeba told her that she had trained as a barmaid, but her pregnancy had put a  stop to her work plans. The father was Marcus. Linda remembered him, Marcus  who loved exotic fruit and who had started his own plant nursery in Ystad at  the age of 19. The relationship had soon ended, but the child remained a  fact. Zeba and Linda chatted for a long time, until the toddler started  screaming so loudly and insistently that they had to leave. But they had  kept in touch since that chance meeting, and Linda noticed that she felt  less impatient with the hiatus in her life whenever she managed to build  these bridges between her present and the past that she had known in Ystad.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As she was going home to Mariagatan after her meeting with Zeba, it started  to rain. She took cover in a shopping centre and--while she was waiting for  the weather to clear up--she looked up Anna Westin's number in the  directory. She felt a jolt inside when she found it. She and Anna had had no  contact for ten years. The close friendship of their childhood had ended  abruptly when they both fell in love with the same boy. Afterwards, when the  feelings of infatuation were long gone, they had tried to resuscitate the  friendship, but it had never been the same. Linda hadn't even thought much  about Anna the last couple of years. But seeing Zeba again reminded her of  her old friend and she was happy to discover that Anna still lived in Ystad.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Linda called her that evening and a few days later they met. Over the summer  they would see each other several times a week, sometimes all three of them,  but more often just Anna and Linda. Anna lived on her own as best as she  could on her student budget. She was studying medicine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Linda thought she was almost more shy now than when they were growing up.  Anna's father had left home when she was five or six years old and they  never once heard from him again. Anna's mother lived out in the country in  Löderup, not far from where Linda's grandfather had lived and painted his  favourite, unchanging motifs. Anna was apparently pleased that Linda had  reestablished contact, but Linda soon realised that she had to tread  carefully. There was something vulnerable, almost secretive about Anna and  she would not let Linda come too close.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Still, being with her old friends helped to make Linda's summer go by, even  though she was counting the days until she was allowed to pick up her  uniform from fru Lundberg in the stockroom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Her father worked flat out all summer, dealing with bank and post-office  robberies in the Ystad area. From time to time Linda would hear about one  case, which sounded like a series of well-planned attacks. Once her father  had gone to bed, Linda would often sneak a look at his notebook and the case  file he brought home. But whenever she asked him about the case directly he  would avoid answering. She wasn't a police officer yet. Her questions would  have to go unanswered until September.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The days went by. In the middle of one afternoon in August her father came  home and said that the estate agent had called about a property near  Mossbystrand. Would she like to come and see it with him? She called to  postpone a rendezvous she had arranged with Zeba, then they got into her  father's Peugeot and drove west. The sea was grey. Autumn was in the offing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    chapter 3\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The windows were boarded up, one of the drainpipes stuck out at an angle  from the gutter, and several roof shingles were missing. The house stood on  a hill with a sweeping view of the ocean, but there was something bleak and  dismal about it. This is not a place where my father could find peace, Linda  thought. Here he'll be at the mercy of his inner demons. But what are they,  anyway? She began to list the chief sources of concern in his life, ordering  them in her mind: first there was loneliness, then the creeping tendency to  obesity and the stiffness in his joints. And beyond these? She put the  question aside for the moment and joined her father as he inspected the  outside of the house. The wind blew slowly, almost thoughtfully, in some  nearby beech trees. The sea lay far below them. Linda squinted and spotted a  ship on the horizon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Kurt Wallander looked at his daughter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"You look like me when you squint like that,\" he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Only then?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    They kept walking and behind the house came across the rotting skeleton of a  leather sofa. A field vole jumped from the rusting springs. Wallander looked  around and shook his head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Remind me why I want to move to the country.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I have no idea. Why do you want to move to the country?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I've always dreamed of being able to roll out of bed and walk outside to  take my morning piss, if you'll pardon my language.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She looked at him with amusement. \"Is that it?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Do I need a better reason than that? Come on, let's go.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Let's walk round the house one more time.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This time she looked more closely at the place, as if she were the  prospective buyer and her father the agent. She sniffed around like an  animal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"How much?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Four hundred thousand.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She raised her eyebrows.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"That's what it says,\" he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Do you have that much money?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"No, but the bank has pre-approved my loan. I'm a trusted customer, a  policeman who has always been as good as his word. I think I'm even  disappointed I don't like this place. An abandoned house is as depressing as  a lonely person.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    They drove away. Linda read a sign by the side of the road: Mossbystrand. He  glanced at her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Do you want to go there?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Yes. If you have time.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This was where she had first told him of her decision to become a police  officer. She was done with her vague plan to refinish furniture or to work  in the theatre, as well as with her backpacking trips around the world. It  was a long time since she had broken up with her first love, a boy from  Kenya who had studied medicine in Lund. He had finally gone back to Kenya  and she had stayed put. Linda had looked to her mother, Mona, to provide her  with clues about how to live her own life, but all she saw in her mother was  a woman who left everything half done. Mona had wanted two children and had  only had one. She had thought that Kurt Wallander would be the great and  only passion of her life, but she had divorced him and married a  golf-playing retired banker from Malmö.","brand":"Vintage Crime\/Black Lizard","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302699913445,"sku":"NP9781400095810","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400095810.jpg?v=1767722367","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/before-the-frost-isbn-9781400095810","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}