Before the Frost

A Kurt and Linda Wallander Novel

By: Henning Mankell, Ebba Segerberg - translator

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

In this latest atmospheric thriller, Kurt Wallander and his daughter, Linda, join forces to search for a religious fanatic on a murder spree.

Just graduated from the police academy, Linda Wallander returns to Skane to join the police force, and she already shows all the hallmarks of her father - the maverick approach, the flaring temper. Before she even starts work she becomes embroiled in the case of her childhood friend, Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared.

As the case that her father is working on dovetails with her own, something far more dangerous than either could have imagined begins to emerge. They soon find themselves forced to confront a group of extremists bent on punishing the world's sinners.

More mayhem? Listen to all of our Kurt Wallander mysteries.

©2002 Henning Mankell (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Powerful....Thoroughly engaging....Amazingly human characters....Mankell [is] a master storyteller." ( San Francisco Chronicle)
"Gripping, beautifully orchestrated....Henning Mankell is an addictive writer." ( Los Angeles Times Book Review)

Great story but narrator terrible.

Story is mostly predictable but enjoyed the characters and the journey it took to solve mysterious disappearance and murder and tie it together. Narrator almost ruined it. She had two emotions, overly angry and bored. Narrator also slipped into an Irish accent a few times while trying to be Swedish.

Grim

Very dark story intertwined with extremist evangelical actions and ideology. The performance was laced with excessive anger and yelling. Had to force myself to listen until it ended.

Good story, bad narration

I’ve loved all the Wallander books, and this one had great potential if only the reader would have done a little research into the characters before reading the book. She was not my favorite. I found that I would ignore a lot of the things happening just to get it over with.

A New Wallender on the Case!

If you like Kurt Wallender mysteries, then this one is for you. The lead character is Linda, his daughter. She has decided to follow in her father's footsteps and enter the police force. However, after she finishes her formal training, and before her post begins in Ystad, she becomes involved in events that may be related -- a missing friend and a grisly murder. This allows her to do some investigating on her own, and it allows her to observe and work with her father, Kurt. It's got a good mystery, and explores father-daughter dynamics in an interesting way.

Not the best!

I was predisposed to like this book, but I really didn't like the narrators voice for Wallender. Very distracting. Linda's character is so focused on herself that it becomes tedious and she acts so stupidly towards the end of the book that I couldn't really care what happened to her. Hope other Wallender books are better.

anything great from Henning

loved the book, vocals were great and I always look forward to another book of his.

An air of depression is all over the story.

Could not continuo listening. Even the narrator sounded depressed. The story might be good, but the progression was very hard.

Not too bad but only an average read

I normally love Mankel's world of Wallander and looked forward to this story featuring Linda. That did not come to completion like I wanted. While a good story

Like father, like daughter

While I did enjoy the story, I found myself losing patience with some of the narration. I listened to this after listening to several Wallander books narrated by Dick Hill, and while I appreciate that this was about Linda Wallander, and thus appropriate to have a female narrator, it did take me out of the story on occasion. I did like the evolving relationship between us father and daughter. Wallander is a hard guy to like! But a perfect example of how we never really know what another person is battling inside.

It starts off well

This book is fine up until that last 1/4 or 1/6. The end of this book, however, seems to be an exercise in how much drama can be manufactured by people behaving in the most incomprehensibly stupid manner possible.