Stopping to use a cash machine late one evening, a man inexplicably falls to the ground dead. Then a taxi driver is savagely attacked by two teenage girls. Quickly apprehended, they appal Inspector Wallander and his colleagues with their total lack of remorse. One girl escapes from custody and disappears. Soon afterwards a power failure causes an engineer to visit the malfunctioning sub-station, where he makes a grisly discovery. Wallander is sure...

"A novel in which Kurt Wallander becomes involved in the case of the disappearance of a retired naval officer--who is Wallander's daughter Linda's future father-in-law--which leads him into a story of Cold War espionage. Wallander also confronts his own age and mortality, while welcoming his first granddaughter"--Provided by publisher.

"The execution-style murder of a Swedish housewife looks like a simple case even though there is no obvious suspect. But then Wallander learns of a determined stalker, and soon enough, the cops catch up with him. But when his alibi turns out to be airtight, they realize that what seemed a simple crime of passion is actually far more complex—and dangerous. The search for the truth behind the killing eventually uncovers an assassination plot, and...

The story of the Swedish detective’s beginnings, told in five gripping short mysteries: “An indispensable chapter to the saga” (Booklist Online).
 
Here are the stories that trace, chronologically, Kurt Wallander’s growth from a rookie cop into a young father and then a middle-aged divorcé, illuminating how he became a first-rate detective and highlighting new facets of the character who...

February, 1991. A life raft washes ashore in Skåne carrying two dead men in expensive suits, shot gangland-style. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team determine that the men were Eastern European criminals. But what appears in Sweden to be an open-and-shut case soon plunges Wallander into an alien world of police surveillance, thinly veiled threats, and life-endangering lies.
When another murder is committed, Wallander must travel to Riga,

...

After nearly thirty years in the same job, Inspector Kurt Wallander is tired, restless, and itching to make a change. He is taken with a certain old farmhouse, perfectly situated in a quiet countryside with a charming, overgrown garden. There he finds the skeletal hand of a corpse in a shallow grave. Wallander’s investigation takes him deep into the history of the house and the land, until finally the shocking truth about a long-buried secret is...

As Wallander investigates a triple homicide, it becomes apparent that someone else had already been asking questions. When one of his colleagues is also found dead, it is clear that he cases are connected.

A taxi driver is brutally murdered by two young girls who seem to have no real motive for their actions. Elsewhere, a man dies of a heart attack in the middle of Ystad's main square. When Wallander discovers that these two seemingly separate cases connect

Anna, a friend of Wallander's daughter, turns up out of the blue looking for help. When she disappears, Wallander is forced to break the silence with his daughter Linda. The investigations lead Wallander to a Christian cult, with a vendetta against modern society.

Two bodies wash ashore on a life raft in Ystad. When the dead men are identified as Eastern European criminals a Rigan police detective, Karlis Liepa, joins Wallander in Sweden to investigate. However on his return to Riga, Karlis is murdered and Wallander feels it's his duty to find out why.