Four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are found with their throats slit in a convent in Africa. In Sweden, a birdwatcher is skewered to death after falling into a pit of carefully sharpened bamboo poles. How are these deaths connected? Detective Kurt Wallander, “the charmingly melancholy Scandinavian of lore and tradition” (Kirkus Reviews), is hot on the trail.

The sixth book in a series that has taken Europe by storm, The Fifth Woman has sold half a million copies in Sweden alone and has been translated into ten languages. According to the Wall Street Journal “Mankell joins the worthy ranks of such past masters as Georges Simenon, Nicholas Freeling, and Sweden’s own Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.”