Laurie Thompson

The #1 international-bestselling tale of greed, violence, and corporate power from the master of Scandinavian noir. After killing a man in the line of duty, Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself deep in a personal and professional crisis; during more than a year of sick leave, he turns to drink and vice to quiet his lingering demons. Once he pulls himself together, he vows to quit the Ystad police force for good-just before a friend who had asked...

Hudiksvall, January 2006, police find eighteen people massacred in a small village. They think it's the work of a mad man but Birgitta and August believe they were killed by the same person who killed their mother.

It is the first thaw of spring and the body of a young woman surfaces in the River Thorne in the far north of Sweden. Rebecka Martinsson is working as a prosecutor in nearby Karuna. Her sleep has been disturbed by haunting visions of a shadowy, accusing figure. Could the body belong to the ghost in her dreams? And where is the dead girl's boyfriend? Joining forces once again with Police Inspectors Anna-Maria Mella, Rebecka is drawn into an investigation...

Henning Mankell, the acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, has put his unmistakable stamp on this gripping new thriller. Archaeologist Louise Cantor returns home to Sweden and makes a devastating discovery: her only child, twenty-eight-year-old Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule his death a suicide but she knows he was murdered; her quest to find out what really happened to Henrik takes her across the globe to Barcelona, where her...

The story of the Swedish detective's beginnings, told in five gripping short mysteries: "An indispensable chapter to the saga" ( Booklist , starred review). Here are the stories that trace, chronologically, Kurt Wallander's growth from a rookie cop into a young father and then a middle-aged divorce, illuminating how he became a first-rate detective and highlighting new facets of the character who "remains one of the most impressive and credible creations...

December 12, 1945. Nazi Germany lies in ruins as a British warplane lands in Buckeburg. A man carrying a small black bag quickly disembarks and travels to Hamelin, where he disappears behind the prison gates. Early the next day, England's most experienced hangman executes twelve war criminals. Fifty-four years later, retired policeman Herbert Molin spends another sleepless night on his remote farm in Härjedalen, Sweden. But it is this night when...

When a killer linked to a hit-and-run and a possible second murder proves increasingly unstable, a personally affected Van Veeteren comes out of retirement to face the greatest trial of his career.

While on a field trip through the woods on the outskirts of Behren, a young girl stumbles upon a decomposing body wrapped in a carpet and lying in a ditch. The body has no hands, feet, or head, but this was not the work of wild animals. A brutal killer is on the loosebut who is the victim? From the hospital bed where he is recovering from surgery, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren begins to piece together the fragmentary clues that involve a nun who hides...

After hearing her mother's deathbed confession and following the dreary funeral, Maria Adler realizes she has no other option but to seize upon her mother's imperative to do something. Dissolving the life she loathes, Maria changes her appearance and disappears. When she emerges, revenge is her sole occupation. Inspector Van Veeteren and his associates are left bewildered by the curious murder of a man shot twice in the heart and twice below the belt....