"Wallander's introspection and self-doubt make him compellingly real, and his efforts
to find out what happened to those men on the life raft makes for riveting reading."
--Publishers Weekly

"Apart from his uncommon skill at devising dense, multilayered plots, Mankell's forte is matching
mood to setting and subject."--New York Times Book Review

"A tale rich in gritty local culture....The plot is satisfyingly seamy and Wallander is, as always,
discombobulated and astute."--Los Angeles Times

"The writing is spare, the characterization deft, the atmosphere strong and the suspense overwhelming."
--Times Literary Supplement

On the Swedish coastline, two bodies, victims of grisly torture and cold execution, are discovered in a life
raft. With no witnesses, no motives, and no crime scene, Detective Kurt Wallander is frustrated and
uncertain he has the ability to solve a case as mysterious as it is heinous. But after the victims are traced
to the Baltic state of Latvia, a country gripped by the upheaval of Soviet disintegration, Major Liepa of the
Riga police takes over the investigation.

Thinking his work done, Wallander slips into the routine once more, until he is called suddenly to Riga and
plunged into an alien world in which shadows are everywhere, everything is watched, and old regimes will
do anything to stay alive.