Wunderbar: Dieses Buch liest sich leicht und rasch. Nur stellenweise vermisst man die gewohnte Detailtreue in der Beschreibung und Erzählung, ein bisschen lyrischer ist der Tonfall geworden. Es ist von allen Mankell Büchern wahrscheinlich in der schönsten Sprache geschrieben.

This is a likeable, powerful, slow but not plodding mystery including murder, suicide, love, and more. The lead detective, Wallander, seems very believable as a gruff (without the inner teddy bear) wizened hard-driver. The multiple group meetings in the conference room and the worsening health with real symptoms are a couple of the touches that add realism to the typically glossed over mundane world of real policing in the station. Set in Ystad a town in County Skane, Sweden, the story takes place almost exclusively in Sweden. References to past cases-perhaps to engage readers of earlier novels-are thankfully few. The lack of skill among the male detectives in attracting and engaging with women is thankfully realistic. The pace starts very slow but soon picks up. The clues and facts that a reader picks up but the characters do not definitely are engaging and evoke energy, concern, and care from the reader. The story is weak at times and leaves some significant questions unanswered where they could have gracefully been covered before the book ends, which seems almost ham-handed but perhaps realistic. The book is solid but there is nothing absolutely amazing about it and it might sacrifice glamor, violence, or intrigue and gritty details at the expense of a whole lot of realism. And at 400+ p[ages, no one is going to call this taut but the pace at the end satisfies. ( )

I enjoyed this book very much. The pace was slow and realistic. I was exposed to clues and followed trails along with the police force, heading in wrong directions, making mistakes, back tracking and finally figuring things out. Mankell is a master at taking the reader along for the ride. His protagonist, Kurt Wollander, is very believable as a detective. He's smart, but not brilliant, forgetful, but detail oriented, patient, but only up to a point. I will read more books by this author. ( )

A very good and very entertaining and suspenseful crime novel. Kurt Wallander--the main detective in a series of books by Henning Mankell is given the job of finding the murderer of three young people out celebrating midsummer's eve in a forest preserve--but it's not as simple as that because at first there are no bodies and foul play is only presumed by one of the parents of those kids. Instead it's a missing persons case while at the same time there is another mysterious murder of one of Wallander's detective team--Svedberg who as it happens had been investigating the disappearance (at the request of said concerned parent on his own time and unknown to Wallander etal) of the very same kids.

Well--a murderer is on the loose and no one has a clue as to his identity or what his motivation is. The scene of Svedberg's murder--his apartment is strewn with his belongings and the shotgun--the murder weapon is there as well. And as it happens the midsummer's night celebration was meant to be for 4 kids and not 3--a young lady begging off because of a stomach ailment. Returning to Svedberg's apartment on his own Wallander discovers a hiding place in which there is two photographs--one of one of the kids in the group that had been murdered and another of a mysterious woman--later on identified as Louise. Still not a lot to go on. And then there are more murders including the girl who had been sick which happens right under Wallander's nose.

Anyway one of the things that makes One step behind so good is being taken through the whole process of the investigation--numerous interviews, dead ends, evaporating leads. Wallander himself is not feeling very well for all this--he's in the initial stages of a diabetes diagnosis and the investigation as well will exacerbate a chronic case of insomnia. Well you can imagine. To top it all off they will have to dig into the dirt of the life of one of their own--a very well liked detective about whom they will very soon find out they knew very little about his private life.

Eventually some leads do start paying off--and slowly they will begin collating the good information from the bad--circling in on the culprit--as it happens a disgruntled transvestite postal worker with a habit of reading other peoples mail. Well it takes all kinds.

All in all it's well written, keenly observed and the pace is right on the money. That's a combination that is hard to beat and this is one of--though not quite--the best crime novels I've read. To sum up I do see myself reading more of Mankell's work--very well done. ( )

Kurt Wallander - He works tirelessly, eats badly and drinks the nights away in a lonely, neglected flat. Still, he tackles some pretty incredible cases -- An old man has been tortured and beaten to death, his wife lies barely alive beside his shattered body, victims of violence beyond reason. . . a teenage girl douses herself in gasoline and set herself aflame. The next day Sweden's former Minister of Justice has been axed to death and scalped in a murder that has the obvious markings of a demented serial killer… four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are found with their throats slit in an Algerian convent, while in Sweden, a birdwatcher is skewered to death in a pit of carefully sharpened bamboo poles… a Swedish housewife is murdered execution-style in a string of events that uncovers a plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela involving the South African secret service and a ruthless ex-KGB agent… an old acquaintance of Wallander’s, a solicitor, who is tied to an enigmatic business tycoon hiding behind an entourage of brusque secretaries and tight security, turns up dead, shot three times after his father dies in a traffic accident (or was it an accident?). . . In woodland outside Ystad, the police make an horrific discovery: a severed head, and hands locked together in an attitude of prayer. A Bible lies at the victim's side, the pages marked with handwritten corrections. A string of macabre incidents, including attacks on domestic animals, has been taking place, a group of religious extremists who are bent on punishing the world's sinners. … On Midsummer's Eve, three friends gather in a secluded meadow in Sweden. In the beautifully clear twilight, they don costumes and begin a secret role-play. But an uninvited guest soon brings their performance to a gruesome conclusion. His approach is careful; his aim is perfect. Three bullets, three corpses… An unknown killer is on the loose, and their only lead is a photograph of a strange woman no one in Sweden seems to know…A life raft washes ashore in Skane, Sweden, carrying two dean men in expensive suits, shot gangland-style. It is discovered that the men were Eastern European criminals… A man stops at an ATM during his evening walk and inexplicably falls dead to the ground. Two teenage girls brutally murder a taxi driver They are quickly apprehended, shocking local policemen with their complete lack of remorse. One girl escapes police custody and disappears without a trace. A few days later a blackout cuts power to a large swath of the country When a serviceman arrives at the malfunctioning power substation, he makes a grisly discovery… a shadowy group of anarchic terrorists, hidden by the anonymity of cyberspace. . . and we haven't even gotten to Kurt Wallander's personal issues! ( )