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34th out of 514 books
—
503 voters
Sidetracked (Kurt Wallander #5)
Fourth in the Kurt Wallander series.
In the award-winning Sidetracked, Kurt Wallander is called to a nearby rapeseed field where a teenage girl has been loitering all day long. He arrives just in time to watch her douse herself in gasoline and set herself aflame. The next day he is called to a beach where Sweden’s former Minister of Justice has been axed to death and scalpe...more
In the award-winning Sidetracked, Kurt Wallander is called to a nearby rapeseed field where a teenage girl has been loitering all day long. He arrives just in time to watch her douse herself in gasoline and set herself aflame. The next day he is called to a beach where Sweden’s former Minister of Justice has been axed to death and scalpe...more
Paperback, 432 pages
Published
May 13th 2003
by Vintage
(first published 1995)
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This has been my first book by Mankell and there is going to be more. Not only because I love crime novels, but also because the book was simlpy a great page-turner, one-day read. I could not stop: eating, drinking, sleeping were not the part of my daily routine any more.
Inspector Wallander makes mistakes, gets sidetracked and so what? This only adds excitement to the story even more so as there is a mad serial killer at large. As I believe telling a plot of a detective story spoils the whole f...more
Inspector Wallander makes mistakes, gets sidetracked and so what? This only adds excitement to the story even more so as there is a mad serial killer at large. As I believe telling a plot of a detective story spoils the whole f...more
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Dwaalsporen is het vijfde deel in de Wallander- reeks.
Dwaalsporen speelt zich af tussen 21 juni en 8 juli 1994. Het is de heetste zomer van de eeuw. Kurt Wallander heeft zin in zijn vakantie met Baiba Liepa in Denemarken, de vrouw die hij in Riga heeft leren kennen. Nog een paar weken en dan is het zover. Hij krijgt echter een telefoontje, dat er zich in een koolzaadakker van een boer een meisje schuil houdt. Als hij naar de boer toegaat en het meisje achterna gaat op het veld, is het meisje zo...more
Dwaalsporen speelt zich af tussen 21 juni en 8 juli 1994. Het is de heetste zomer van de eeuw. Kurt Wallander heeft zin in zijn vakantie met Baiba Liepa in Denemarken, de vrouw die hij in Riga heeft leren kennen. Nog een paar weken en dan is het zover. Hij krijgt echter een telefoontje, dat er zich in een koolzaadakker van een boer een meisje schuil houdt. Als hij naar de boer toegaat en het meisje achterna gaat op het veld, is het meisje zo...more
This is an outstanding read: smart and funny. It's as good a Wallander book as I've read. Wallander is his old self-deprecating, frazzled self. He's worried about his daughter and his Latvian girlfriend and Sweden's decline and, oh yeah, there's a serial killer loose in Ystad. And Wallander has to catch him before European summer holiday.
This intense focus on "holiday" was odd. I couldn't tell if Mankell was making fun of it, or just reflecting the reality of living in Sweden. I mean, Wallander...more
This intense focus on "holiday" was odd. I couldn't tell if Mankell was making fun of it, or just reflecting the reality of living in Sweden. I mean, Wallander...more
This was one of my favourites so far in the series. I was kept up at night because I had to find out what happened next and couldn't put the book down! I just love the image of Southern Sweden that Mankell paints in these books and all the social issues that he manages to address. Wallander is not a completely loveable character - but he is authentic. Throughout the book, we see his strengths as well as his vices and weaknesses which make a refreshingly realistic story. This is perhaps also what...more
The title doesn't quite make sense with the story -- maybe it has some kind of double meaning in Swedish? -- but it accurately describes my experience of reading this book. I was in the process of reading several other books, as well as, you know, living my life, but I was completely sidetracked from all these other projects in order to read this book as quickly as possible. This was my first Mankell, and it is elegantly done, with a protagonist you don't love or hate, he's just a real guy. This...more
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I'm reading the Wallander novels in completely the wrong order, but it doesn't seem to matter. This is a cracking story, in which Kurt repeatedly fails to second-guess a serial killer... until eventually he does. The suspense is very well handled and while we are privy to who the killer is for about 80% of the novel, this heightens the suspense - and adds to Wallander's all too human fallibility. Some nice details about his relations with his daughter Linda and his father. The usual asides about...more
Kurt Wallander is a dedicated, over-worked, sleep deprived police officer confronted with a horrific series of crimes. Someone is brutally killing people with an ax and then taking scalps. Wallander is outraged that this type of crime is happening in Sweden (in the States, yes, but not his country) and he and his colleagues bemoan the fate of their country, fearing it is slipping into savagery.
Mankell is expert at creating a highly believable setting and cast of characters. He captures the mood...more
Mankell is expert at creating a highly believable setting and cast of characters. He captures the mood...more
I started out praising this series because it was gentle, like Agatha Christie. But it didn't last. Kurt Wallander ran into his first serial killer, and boy was he crazy. In this book, I couldn't help but notice that many Swedish men pee outdoors. You need to make an appointment to do your laundry in an apartment building. And did you know that Swedes eat pea soup on Thursdays? Ah well. Sweden is disintegrating despite their best effort to build a kinder and gentler nation --a perfect nation as...more
After seeing Kenneth Branagh as Wallander on PBS, I decided to make the series my summer reading. Seemed to make sense to read in chronological order, which was just about my undoing. The first three in the series were tediously written, overblown, and laced with uncomfortable shifts in narrative perspective. If our local library had copies in stock, I would have given up after book #2. Happily, it doesn't, so I had to get them shipped in from around the state, which meant I felt obliged to kept...more
Wallander is the only television drama series I have followed in years. It's pretty damned good. Although the surface stuff is a bit contrived and melodramatic (poor old Kurt has been shot, knifed and blown up in recent episodes), that doesn't matter. It's only the wrapping paper. I'm delighted to find that this my first read of Mankell is, like most source texts, better than the television series in its character and relationship depiction, and the dark, angst-ridden Swedish backdrop.
Mankell a...more
Mankell a...more
Someone is murdering men with a hatchet, cleaving their heads and taking their scalps. Author Mankell relates this tale from two perspectives, that of Kurt Wallender, lead detective, and the killer himself. It takes a while before these perspectives begin to merge, and Wallender berates himself for not recognizing the awful truth sooner. The crimes themselves constitute the bones of this tale, which is fleshed out by the thoughts of cop and criminal. Wallender is, as always in this series, a lon...more
I've been reading Henning Mankell's Wallander series since I picked up The Return of the Dancing Master at an airport. I like the dry, serious, battle-scarred detective who is bewildered by an increasingly unfamiliar Sweden where bad things, really bad things, can happen. His uneasy personal relationships provide an interesting dimension to his personality. I particularly like the portrayal of his feelings about his father and his daughter - one turning back into a child, and the other growing i...more
Sidetracked (Villospår) is the fifth in Henning Mankell’s Swedish Inspect Kurt Wallander novels. It has the standard ingredients: immigrants, graphic violence just short of the horror genre, overlapping plot threads, grumpy colleagues, and a private life that always gets the short end of the stick.
The title refers to the difficulty Wallander has in staying on track as other crimes cross the path of the serial murderer. Since we readers see the villain in action long before the police identify h...more
The title refers to the difficulty Wallander has in staying on track as other crimes cross the path of the serial murderer. Since we readers see the villain in action long before the police identify h...more
Well, it certainly is an improvement on the previous book ("Dancing Mater"). No wonder, Wallender is in this one (supposedly one of the most famous detectives in crime fiction). The translator has used crisp and clear language.
Hmm, I can catch anomalies in this book too. The girl who immolated herself had a pure gold chain which miraculously didn't melt in the heat of intense fire. No one uses Google, though they have computers. Why do they need to send out for an atlas to find where the girl ha...more
Hmm, I can catch anomalies in this book too. The girl who immolated herself had a pure gold chain which miraculously didn't melt in the heat of intense fire. No one uses Google, though they have computers. Why do they need to send out for an atlas to find where the girl ha...more
Yet another enjoyable Wallender mystery, everything you've come to expect from a good Scandinavian crime novel: flawed hero (who actually develops), social commentary, brooding, interesting minor characters, and lots of coffee drinking*. The only thing missing was the bleak setting, as this particular story takes place in late June and July. This is the first Wallender book to focus on a serial killer, but it was published in 1995 after all, a couple years after The Silence of the Lambs won a to...more
Another excellent mystery. This book continues the author's ruminations on a changing society in Sweden that is more violent, more senseless, and more incomprensible to traditonally trained detectives in the police force. It also tackles the introduction of women to the detective force and a generation gap between the 50-something detective Kurt Wallender and more recent graduates of the police academy. He goes through one of the more dismaying aspects of middle age: on one hand you're looked up...more
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Sidetracked is Book #5 in the Kurt Wallander series. Each one gets better than the last.
You could read Sidetracked as a standalone novel but you would probably get more reading pleasure by starting at book one in the series. But don’t take my word for it. The character of Kurt Wallander and his books have been made into movies / television series in both Europe and in the United States – the writing and stories are that good.
The author, Henning Mankell, is a master at character development. His...more
You could read Sidetracked as a standalone novel but you would probably get more reading pleasure by starting at book one in the series. But don’t take my word for it. The character of Kurt Wallander and his books have been made into movies / television series in both Europe and in the United States – the writing and stories are that good.
The author, Henning Mankell, is a master at character development. His...more
I began reading Sidetracked after we had started watching the British television productions of Mankell's Wallander books, with which I immediately connected. Wallander is a skilled detective but less skilled at managing his life. He struggles with his relationships with his father and his daughter. He's divorced, and during Sidetracked, is more or less in a relationship with a woman living in Latvia whom we never actually meet. Aside from solving murders, he's quite dysfunctional. He can hardly...more
The fifth book in Wallander series. I hadn't read them in order (but now have the missing pieces, so will proceed in order).
Wallander witnesses a young woman set herself in fire and die in a nearby rapeseed field. A few days later a former minister of justice of Sweden is found killed - and scalped - near his house in Ystad. The two cases seem to have nothing in common. And as the days go by, a few other scalped bodies show up...
An addictive series. I like lonely detectives, so in that sense Wal...more
Wallander witnesses a young woman set herself in fire and die in a nearby rapeseed field. A few days later a former minister of justice of Sweden is found killed - and scalped - near his house in Ystad. The two cases seem to have nothing in common. And as the days go by, a few other scalped bodies show up...
An addictive series. I like lonely detectives, so in that sense Wal...more
El quinto libro de la serie Wallander est�� a la altura de sus predecesores. Es una historia escalofriante con asesino en serie incluido en la que el lector siempre va por delante del equipo de investigaci��n pero sin tener siempre toda la informaci��n. Las pesquisas y los caminos mentales del inspector se exponen con una claridad asombrosa y el conjunto es magn��fico. Los fragmentos en los que la narraci��n toma la perspectiva del asesino son un poco turbadores y est��n muy bien pensados, desve...more
This was the very first Wallander book I ever read. While it started out rather gripping (any time a person lights themselves on fire in the middle of an open field, you have my attention) but I felt that it got a tiny bit slow, just as all the Wallander books do. I mean, most of them are pretty straight forward police procedurals. To be quite honest, the only reason that I keep coming back to Henning Mankell's stories is because I like Kurt Wallander so much. The stories themselves don't seem t...more
Été 1994, la petite ville d'Ystad somnole la chaleur. Rivés devant leurs postes de télévision, tous les Suédois suivent la Coupe du monde de football. Mais, alors que l'inspecteur Wallander se prépare à partir en vacances, une jeune fille s'immole par le feu dans un champ de colza. Le lendemain, un ancien ministre est tué à coups de hache. Une série de meurtres d'une sauvagerie terrifiante se déclenche. La police d'Ystad, menée par Kurt Wallander, entame une course contre la montre haletante pou...more
It's summertime in Sweden and everyone is on vacation or preparing to go on vacation. Kurt Wallander is called to a rapeseed field where a girl has been loitering all day, and when he arrives she sets herself on fire. Then a former Minister of Justice is discovered, scalped, and soon the police realize they have a serial murderer on their hands. Wallander works day and night to track down the murderer and at the same time investigate the suicide of the young woman, all the while beset by difficu...more
I am reading the series of mystery novels by Swedish writer Henning Mankell. This book was interesting to me because of its description of the interior life of Detective Kurt Wallander and how it differs from that of the American detective. The reluctance with which he wants to carry a gun, let alone shoot it, the worries about the direction of society, the loss of compassion and increase in violence he sees depresses him. The concerns are the same as in the U.S. but the belief in the Swedish ci...more
Ok. I'm hooked. I LIKE this writer, the series, the insights. It's a pleasure to read. He's got some great quotes, which I'll put in the quote section here of GoodReads, but just to tempt you:
"Among all the nonsense, mistakes, and bad ideas we come up with, maybe some truth will sneak in." (p.166) If that isn't a motto for life!
There were anti-mottoes as well. At one point, a prostitute is describing a group of people at a party."He)liked to bring people together who had the ability to live life...more
"Among all the nonsense, mistakes, and bad ideas we come up with, maybe some truth will sneak in." (p.166) If that isn't a motto for life!
There were anti-mottoes as well. At one point, a prostitute is describing a group of people at a party."He)liked to bring people together who had the ability to live life...more
"Kurt Wallender is called to a nearby rapeseed field where a teenage girl has been loitering all day long. He arrives just in time to watch her douse herself in gasoline and set herself aflame. The next day he is called to a beach where Sweden's former Minister of Justice has been axed to death and scalped. The murder has the
obvious markings of a demented serial killer and Wallander is frantic to find him before he strikes again. But his investigation is beset with a handful of obstacles - a de...more
obvious markings of a demented serial killer and Wallander is frantic to find him before he strikes again. But his investigation is beset with a handful of obstacles - a de...more
This book moved along much more quickly than The Man Who Smiled. Wallander's character, who is prone to deep introspection, didn't seem to become as bogged down in his moody depressive thoughts as he was previously. In The Man Who Smiled, I just wanted to grab Wallander by the lapels and shake him till he snapped out of it. Perhaps it is a Swedish thing?
In Sidetracked, the Ysted police force is faced with a horrific serial killer and it's affecting everyone, more so since it seems half of them...more
In Sidetracked, the Ysted police force is faced with a horrific serial killer and it's affecting everyone, more so since it seems half of them...more
Ever since a friend forced me to watch Lars Von Trier's terrible and awesome The Kingdon, I've been spending a lot of time in Scandinavia, fiction-wise. In the past few months I've read Peter Hoeg's The Quiet Girl, then the films Let the Right One In and Terribly Happy (both recommended, if you come across them!) and the day before Thanksgiving, suffering from a head cold, I wandered into my local bookstore and asked them to recommend me things that were depressing, dense, wintry, cold, and poss...more
I thoroughly enjoyed this story of Wallander's investigation of 2 creepy incidents: one a territying murder by a demented serial killer; the other, the suicide of a young girl committed in front of a helpless and horrified Wallander. Mankell weaves in preoccupation with a changing Swedish society, topical social issues, Wallander's personal relationships and interactions within the investigation team. This became a book I could not wait to finish; I had to know what was going to happen. I didn't...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Henning Mankell | 5 | 38 | Sep 27, 2012 11:06am | |
| Goodreads Librari...: Please combine | 3 | 145 | Jul 11, 2012 05:41am |
Henning Mankell is an internationally known Swedish crime writer, children's author and playwright. He is best known for his literary character Kurt Wallander.
Mankell splits his time between Sweden and Mozambique. He is married to Eva Bergman, Swedish director and daughter of Ingmar Bergman.
More about Henning Mankell...
Mankell splits his time between Sweden and Mozambique. He is married to Eva Bergman, Swedish director and daughter of Ingmar Bergman.
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“Among all the nonsense, mistakes, and bad ideas we come up with, maybe some truth will sneak in.”
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