El hallazgo del cadaver de una joven agente inmobiliaria, asesinada brutalmente sin ningun motivo aparente, supone para Wallander un descenso a los infiernos mucho mas largo y profundo de lo que nunca hubiera imaginado al iniciarse un caso. Y esta vez, ademas, se trata de una conspiracion internacional detras de la cual se encuentra una organizacion de extrema derecha. Esta, decidida a dinamitar el proceso antiapartheid en la lejana Sudafrica, ha contratado a un asesino a sueldo, quien, con la ayuda de un antiguo agente de la KGB, planea atentar contra un importante dirigente muy cerca de donde Wallander investiga. Acosado por sus persistentes problemas personales, el inspector entrara en una espiral de suspense cada vez mas vertiginoso. / Like his countrymen Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Mankell writes mysteries that connect crimes in Sweden to the rest of the world. Faceless Killers (1997), the first of his books about provincial police inspector Kurt Wallender to appear here, involved Turkish immigrants and Eastern European villains. This novel, written in 1993, links the murder of a real estate agent in Wallender's town of Ystad to South Africa, where Nelson Mandela has just been released from prison, and to Russia, where the KGB is busy planning Mandela's fate. Wallender is a classically dour but dedicated policeman whose progress through his cases is a combination of hard slogging and lucky breaks. But several factors render this effort less compelling than its predecessor. The first is the Day of the Jackal syndrome: we know that Mandela wasn't killed by KGB agents or white Afrikaner terrorists, and that knowledge makes the suspense writer's job even harder. Second is the book's length?560 pages is a long haul, even with three exotic settings and dozens of important characters. Third might be Thompson's translation, which?unlike Steven T. Murray's work on Faceless Killers?often seems excessively deadpan. But Wallender is still a solid character, whose strengths and weaknesses are utterly credible, and Mankell (who now lives in Mozambique) knows how to make the most of his virtues. Reed Business Information