The Troubled Man: A Kurt Wallander Mystery - Hardcover

"With his new Wallander novel Mankell ups his game and enters John le Carre territory." --"Los Angeles Times""[The] perpetually dour Swedish detective is at his gloomy best." --"The New York Times Book Review""At once richer in personal detail and more suspenseful than either a work of strictly mainstream fiction or a simple police novel could be. Mankell remains in the vanguard of those writers taking the crime story back to its origins in the realistic novel." --"San Francisco Chronicle" "A magnificent finale." --"Financial Times""Arguably Mankell's best Wallander book--which makes the finale for his rule-breaking, overeating, over-drinking, depressed but ultimately good-hearted and righteous detective all the more poignant." --"The Plain Dealer"" " "Mankell's prose is as blunt and pragmatic as his hero." --"The New Yorker" "By far the most personal and poignant in this classic and compulsive series." --"New York Journal of Books " "Mankell's ability to unspool a mystery and Wallander's ability to solve it are still at the head of the class." --"Newsday" "A story that rings deep and hinges on personal stakes. . . . It is the voice of the author--through his hero--and the illumination of layers of life in a thankless profession that lead into a delicious abyss of urgency battling with hopelessness, a rationalization of risk versus a reward already buried under a false headstone." --"The Oregonian" "A moving portrait of a man entering old age." --"The Times Literary Supplement "(London)" " "A richly embroidered tapestry." --"Providence Journal"

Every morning Håkan von Enke takes a walk in the forest near his apartment in Stockholm. However, one winter's day he fails to come home. It seems that the retired naval officer has vanished without trace.

Detective Kurt Wallander is not officially involved in the investigation but he has personal reasons for his interest in the case as Håkan's son is engaged to his daughter Linda. A few months earlier, at Håkan's 75th birthday party, Kurt noticed that the old man appeared uneasy and seemed eager to talk about a controversial incident from his past career that remained shrouded in mystery. Could this be connected to his disappearance? When Håkan's wife Louise also goes missing, Wallander is determined to uncover the truth.

His search leads him down dark and unexpected avenues involving espionage, betrayal and new information about events during the Cold War that threatens to cause a political scandal on a scale unprecedented in Swedish history. The investigation also forces Kurt to look back over his own past and consider his hopes and regrets, as he comes to the unsettling realisation that even those we love the most can remain strangers to us.

And then an even darker cloud appears on the horizon...

The return of Kurt Wallander, for his final case, has already caused a sensation around the globe. The Troubled Man confirms Henning Mankell's position as the king of crime writing.