A new Mankell book is always welcome, and I’ve waited for the paperback this time. Before The Frost is the first Linda Wallander novel, and featuring our favourite Swedish detective’s daughter on her first case.
Actually it turns out not to really be her first case since the majority of the novel takes place before she has actually started with the Ystad force. As usual, dark doings are taking place in Skane, and while her father’s leading the case, we see things from the eyes of Linda who tends to lead things along. Indeed her friend may be caught up in things.
We open some twenty years earlier in Guyana where a sect has committed mass “suicide”. As ever with these prologues, you’re not sure where you’re going. But things clear up as the novel progresses.
The Mankell novels are popular throughout Europe, and you feel that they’re finally breaking through properly in the UK now. Indeed Random House have set up a website – mankellholicsanonymous.com to promote this latest paperback.
Good fun – well fun’s probably the wrong word – and well worth a read. Roll on – The Man Who Smiled in the Autumn.