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One Step Behind (Kurt Wallender Mystery)
 
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One Step Behind (Kurt Wallender Mystery) (Paperback)

by Henning Mankell (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 544 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (3 April 2003)
  • ISBN-10: 0099448874
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099448877
  • Product Dimensions: 17.7 x 11.1 x 4.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 13,953 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Product Description
It is Midsummer's Eve, three young friends gather in a wood. In the still-sunlit, Scandanavian dusk, they don costumes joyfully to enact - or so it appears to an unseen observer - a kind of masque. The hidden watcher soon brings their performance to an end. His approach is careful; his aim is perfect - three bullets, three corpses. The murderer, then, carefully photographs the grisly tableau. The Ystad police station, meanwhile, is experiencing a summer lull, indeed Inspector Wallander is at last at liberty to attend to - albeit reluctantly - his deteriorating health, but his peace of mind is shattered when one of his colleagues is murdered. An unknown killer, seen by no-one, is on the loose, and the police's only lead is a photograph of three dead young people in costume. Forced to dig more deeply than he would have wanted into the personal life of one of his colleagues, Wallander's investigation reveals something none of his team could ever have imagined. However, they remain tantalisingly, terrifyingly one step behind the lethal progress of a killer Wallander would have to suppose was deranged if his methods were not so meticulous and his victims so clinically targeted.

About the Author
Henning Mankell was born in Stockholm in 1948. He is the author of many works of fiction, among them the nine novels in the Kurt Wallander series. His books have been translated into 19 languages. He has worked as an actor, theatre director and manager in Sweden and more recently in Mozambique, where he is now head of the Teatro Avenida in Maputo. He won the Swedish Academy of Crime Literature award for Faceless Killers.

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One Step Behind (Kurt Wallender Mystery)
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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews
5 star:
 (6)
4 star:
 (7)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Skåne is lethal!, 29 Nov 2002
This is one of the better Wallander novels. The story begins with typical Mankell opening - a killing with mysterious and incomplete details. The tension builds as Wallander's team are increasingly aware of links with one of their colleagues mysteriously killed in an apparently unrelated incident. The culmination builds to a crescendo as the killer gets very personal. Some of the details are totally unexplained even at the end of the book, but this does not spoil the overall quality of the writing. In spite of actually being a quiet rural area with a distinctive accent, Skåne comes over in the Wallander series as a lethal place to live. Wallander continues his decline in this book, now suffering from diabetes and angst over his dead father - he reminds me of both John Rebus(by Ian Rankin) and Martin Beck (Sjöwell/Wahlöö). Thoroughly recommended as an expose of aspects of contemporary Swedish society as well as a riveting police procedure novel.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars multi-layered detective tale Swedish style, 27 Oct 2002
By Dr. Sn Cottam "Steve the medic" (Preston, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team return to investigate the harrowing case of a serial killer whose victims include one of their own colleagues. Interspersed in the investigation, that takes Wallander to the Swedish Baltic islands and to Copenhagen, the anxieties, doubts and health concerns of the all too human Kurt Wallander intervene.

Mankell tells a good story, creates a believable atmosphere of an overworked, under-resourced police team investigating a brutal and baffling series of crimes plus coping with the loss of a colleague while the media, politicians and high brass are pressurising for quick results. The detection (99 % perspiration and 1 % inspiration) is realistically recreated while Mankell is excellent in evoking the changing environment of modern Sweden and the loss of the old certainties, while Kurt Wallander must be one of the most human and sympathetic detectives in current fiction.

Although perhaps not quite as good as some of Wallander's previous excursions (The Fifth Woman is particularly excellent), One Step Behind succeeds as both crime story and novel. Somehow that the peaceful Skane area of southern Sweden seems to have a murder rate similar to that of Glasgow or Los Angeles simply doesn't seem to matter. We look forward to the next in this consistently readable and well thought out series.

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended!, 9 Nov 2003
By S. Mazumder "s_maz" - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
'One Step Behind' by Mankell is a fantastic read which I will recommend to anyone. This is another installment in the Detective Wallander series, and Mankell has clearly flourished into a much more accomplished writer and teller of crime fiction than he was when he first started out.

In One Step Behind, we follow Wallander as he investigates a Midsummer's Eve murder and the murder of a fellow policeman. The chase is riveting, and fast-paced, and the main character comes so close to the killer many times but each time just misses. This makes for exciting reading. What's more is that everything is believable, and the novel is not written in an overhyped Hollywood-script type way.

This is a very enjoyable read, and I recommend it to all fans of this genre. Let's hope Mankell will flourish even more, and join the elite of the crime fiction ranks.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Morse in Sweden?
This is the second of Mankell's books in his Inspector Wallander series that I have read and I enjoyed it as much as the first. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Brian R. Martin

5.0 out of 5 stars one step behind
Mankell is brilliant. The plots are fairly gruesome, but this is almost not the point....he has a trick of pulling the reader into the place, and into the group of characters. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mrs. J. Wirtz

4.0 out of 5 stars Swedish Serial Killers in Book Format
This is a tightly written crime novel that doesn't leave any stones unturned or plot holes unplugged. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Oliver Redfern

5.0 out of 5 stars My favourite Kurt Wallender story
This is the 6th in the Kurt Wallender novels written by Henning Mankell and In my humble opinion the best to date. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Scully Bloke

4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping stuff
Excellent read. Probably the best Inspector Wallander book, and the last few pages left me shaking (not in response to the crime plot either!). Read more
Published 22 months ago by R Leslie

5.0 out of 5 stars Tracking a very careful serial killer
On Midsummer night (a big celebration in Sweden) 3 young adults are shot to death in cold blood in a nature reserve in South Sweden. Read more
Published on 12 Jun 2006 by Linda Oskam

4.0 out of 5 stars One Step Behind, by Henning Mankell
In this latest outing for his tortured detective, Kurt Wallander, Mankell adopts all of the tactics that have made his books so successful. Read more
Published on 26 Mar 2006 by tommyvyc

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast paced, tense, keeps you guessing
.
This Kurt Wallander story follows the pattern Mankell has established for these novels. I hesitate to call it a formula because I think Mankell's novels stand above... Read more
Published on 4 May 2004 by A. Butterfield

4.0 out of 5 stars One Step Behind
The book cost me 2 nights as I would not put it down. As usual the description of the disturbed perpetrator is excellent. Read more
Published on 23 Jan 2003 by Patrick Bauer

4.0 out of 5 stars Skåne is lethal!
This is one of the better Wallander novels. The story begins with typical Mankell opening - a killing with mysterious and incomplete details. Read more
Published on 11 Nov 2002 by robinshall

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