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A retired farming couple, alone in a remote Skåne farmhouse. One dead. One barely breathing, a noose around her neck—and a single whispered word on her lips: foreign. With this chilling opening, Henning Mankell introduces readers to Detective Kurt Wallander, a brilliant but battered forty-two-year-old investigator whose personal demons—alcoholism, an estranged daughter, a life fraying at the edges—are no match for his relentless pursuit of the truth.
As Wallander digs deeper, the case grows darker: a victim who led a secret double life, an unusual knot that no one has ever seen before, and a careless press leak that ignites anti-immigrant hysteria across the country, turning a murder investigation into a race against mob violence. Faceless Killers is more than a crime novel—it is a searing portrait of a society fracturing under the weight of its own fears.
Winner of the inaugural Glass Key Award for Nordic crime fiction and the novel that launched one of the most celebrated detective series of our time, this is the book that established Henning Mankell as the defining voice of Scandinavian noir. Adapted for television twice and beloved by millions of readers worldwide, Faceless Killers belongs on every crime fiction shelf. This relaunch edition presents the complete Wallander series in a bold new light, as every volume features a striking, newly commissioned cover design and a fully redesigned interior, built for a new generation of readers.
“An especially satisfying crime novel, like those of such past masters as Georges Simenon, Nicholas Freeling, and Sweden’s own Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Intelligent, moving and topical, this is a thriller of the very best kind.”
—The Times (London)
“A well-crafted police procedural, the story moves along at a brisk pace and comes to an exciting climax.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“If you haven’t read Faceless Killers, you have something to look forward to.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Wonderful! Police procedural with personal texture.”
—Associated Press
“The first Kurt Wallander mystery remains a classic, biting dose of icy noir.”
—The Plain Dealer
Henning Mankell (1948–2015) was an internationally bestselling author who received numerous awards, including the Crime Writers’ Association’s Macallan Gold Dagger and the German Tolerance Prize. His Kurt Wallander mysteries are global bestsellers and have been adapted into the PBS Masterpiece Mystery! series Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh. The New Press has published English translations of nine of his Kurt Wallander mysteries—Faceless Killers, The Dogs of Riga, The White Lioness, Sidetracked, The Fifth Woman, One Step Behind, Firewall, The Man Who Smiled, and The Pyramid—and Before the Frost: A Linda Wallander Mystery; the novels The Return of the Dancing Master, Chronicler of the Winds, Depths, Kennedy’s Brain, The Eye of the Leopard, Italian Shoes, Daniel, and The Shadow Girls; and the nonfiction I Die, But My Memory Lives On: The World AIDS Crisis and the Memory Book Project. Born in Stockholm, Mankell grew up in the Swedish village of Sveg. He divided his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where he was a director at Teatro Avenida.