First published 2010
Inspector Kurt Wallander stares at the body of Holger Eriksson, a retired car dealer impaled on bamboo stakes in a ditch behind his isolated home. The bird watcher's gruesome death puzzles Wallander until a second victim appears. A missing florist turns up strangled and bound to a tree. The inspector has few leads: a skull, a diary, and a photograph showing three men. As Wallander digs deeper, he discovers these Swedish murders connect to an unsolved case from a year earlier. In an African convent, four nuns died alongside an unidentified fifth woman whose death the local police concealed. The investigation pushes Wallander to his limits as he works to understand why these victims died and how their fates link across continents. This sixth case in the series tests both his detective skills and his endurance.
Genres: mystery, crime, thriller, detective
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: detective-story, police-procedural
Setting: Africa, Sweden
Period: 20th-century
560 pages · Paperback · Marsilio
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence, murder