One Step Behind

A Dour Detective Hunts a Serial Killer

One Step Behind by Henning Mankell is the seventh book in his series featuring the morose Detective Inspector Wallander. In 2002, the novel was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller.

Kurt Wallander, Mankell’s most famous creation, investigates the murder of three teenagers in typical dour style.

Synopsis

When Karl Svedberg doesn’t show up for work at the Ystad police station, his colleagues are surprised, and concern spreads until Inspector Kurt Wallander visits his home to check he is OK. He isn’t. He is lying dead on the carpet with his brains blown out.

A few weeks earlier, three teenagers’ parents reported them missing. They had had a midsummer’s eve party and hadn’t been seen since. A couple of walkers discover their bodies six weeks after they disappeared, each with a gunshot wound to the head.

Kurt Wallander begins to suspect that his colleague Svedberg had been investigating the disappearance of the three teenagers on his own time, without leaving an official record.

Is it possible that Wallander has a serial killer on his hands? What did Svedberg know?

Wallander is left one step behind, trying to find out.

Review

In One Step Behind, Hanning Mankell draws an entirely plausible hero in the form of Kurt Wallander. Wallander is a middle-aged man who has lost his zest for life. His father has died, his ex-wife is getting remarried, and his girlfriend has left him. To top that all off, he has just been diagnosed with diabetes. His doctor has told him he eats and drinks too much and doesn’t get enough exercise. You can’t help but think that the sugar crystals floating around in Wallander’s blood will get to him before the book’s serial killer does.

This is a one-character book, Wallander hogs the limelight, but Mankell’s bit players shore him up pleasingly. The animosity between the police and the state prosecutor is particularly well drawn out. Mankell portrays his protagonists artfully.

Wallander is morose and irritable, and the action moves in a similarly melancholy manner, but Mankell turns the screws as a young girl, and then a couple are also murdered. By the novel’s end, what had been an almost painfully slow start becomes a can’t-put-it-down thriller as the action runs away.

Mankell’s plot is dense, with an exacting eye for detail. Scraps of evidence emerge, and Wallander slowly puts together a clear picture.

The book isn’t without its faults; there are two occasions where Wallander takes matters into his own hands as a diabetic James Bond, and you wince, “he would never have done that”. However, the beauty of the book is its dreariness. Although it is set at the height of the Swedish summer, all you feel is Wallander’s depression. The dank atmosphere is ever-present.

If you like your novels grimly atmospheric and gripping, populated with real people, not superheroes, this is one for your list.

Excerpt

It was 3:10 a.m. he couldn’t wait any longer. The moment was at hand, the hour he alone had appointed. He could barely remember the last time he had worn a watch. The hours and minutes ticked continuously within him. He had an inner clock that was always on time.

Down by the light-blue tablecloth, everything was still. They lay with their arms wrapped around one another, listening to the music. He didn’t know if they were sleeping, but they were lost in the moment and did not sense that he was right behind them.

He picked up the revolver with the silencer that had been lying on his raincoat. He looked around quickly, then made his way stealthily to the tree located directly behind the group, and paused for a few seconds. No one had noticed anything. He looked around one last time. But there was no one else there. They were alone.

He stepped out and shot each one of them once in the head. He couldn’t help it that blood splattered onto the white wigs. It was over so quickly that he barely had time to register what he was doing. But now they lay dead at his feet, still wrapped around each other, just like a few seconds before.

He turned off the tape recorder that had been playing and listened. The birds were chirping. Once again he looked around. Of course there was no one there. He put his gun away and spread a napkin out on the cloth. He never left a trace.

One Step Behind by Henning Mankell