The Fifth Woman: A Kurt Wallander Mystery (Kurt Wallander Mysteries (Hardcover)) - Hardcover

Mankell, Henning

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565845471 ISBN 13: 9781565845473

Publisher: The New Press, 2000

Synopsis

Inspector Kurt Wallander is at it again. Four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are found with their throats slit in an Algerian convent. In Sweden, a birdwatcher is skewered to death in a pit of carefully sharpened bamboo poles. How are these deaths connected? Wallander, "the charmingly melancholy Scandinavian of lore and tradition" (Kirkus Reviews), is hot on the trail.

About this title

Review:

A series of men who seem to have nothing in common are brutally killed--one is impaled, another starved and then strangled. We know more than the police--we know that the killer is a woman and we gradually understand some of her motivation; her much wronged mother was murdered almost by chance in a North African country--but we don't know who she is, or, for a while at least, her motives and principles of selection of her victims. Inspector Wallender finds himself investigating the case--two missing person enquiries that turn into a murder hunt--and finds himself endlessly confused by red herrings and side issues; a set of leads concerning mercenaries in the Congo of the 1960s turn out to have little to do with the case and Wallender has to waste considerable time suppressing an attempt by the far Right to turn the murders into a reason to set up vigilante justice.The Fifth Woman is a stylish police procedural which lets us see not only the leg work of investigation but also the diligence which makes effective murder possible--the killer Wallender is trying to catch is at least as good at her job of murder as he is at his of prevention. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

Lyrical....Meticulously detailed.... Masterful.

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1565845471
• ISBN 13: 9781565845473
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 423