I'm not quite ready to give up on the Swedish mysteries but this one has me close to it. What a horrid, spoiled, immature brat the main character, Linda Wallander is - very unlikable. I was wishing one of the bad guys would off her so the story would end. There were parts that I had to laugh at and had me wondering if perhaps the author is totally unaware of how a young woman should be. The plot held promise but that quickly died after the 2nd chapter as the main character had one tantrum after

1.0 stars — I just finished my first ( and hopefully last) book by Henning Mankell. I was hoping that Mankell might be another Jo Nesbo but “Before the Frost” was nowhere close to any of Nesbo’s works. My main issue with the book was the very slow pace of the novel. There are large sections in the book where absolutely nothing happens and the stilted unrealistic dialogue between characters drones on for page after page. The main character, Linda Wallander , has just been hired as a police office...

I read this book after watching Kenneth Branagh play Swedish Detective Kurt Wallender in the BBC mini-series. Very moody, atmospheric; very muffled in tone, very Swedish. But the plots wear a bit thin. Not that one minds when one has Kenneth Branagh to contemplate. He is an eternally engaging actor. Anyway, Before the Frost is actually subtitled "A Linda Wallender Mystery," concerning principally his daughter, who is poised to join the Ystad police force herself. The book was OK. I'm terrible at...

I'm a huge Henning Mankell fan, and I love Kurt Wallander. All through the series, his daughter Linda has always been there, but here she plays a major role. The book is touted as "a Kurt and Linda Wallander novel," and from that I gather that he's planning to write more with the father-daughter duo as a unit. After Wallander solo, it's going to be tough, because that particular series is so good that it's really difficult to top. And thus, we come to this particular novel, Before the Frost.The

I'm typically not much of a detective/mystery reader, but I really like Henning Mankell and the ongoing saga of Kurt Wallander, though the focus in this particular novel is primarily on his daughter Linda who is joining the police force with him. Mankell is so good developing plot and character, really pushing the limits of the mystery genre, and the series overall is staggeringly good.I'm slowly but surely reading through all of the Wallander books, in German no less, to keep up and I hope to i...

This book reminds me yet again of how much I miss Mankell. He's one of my all time favorite authors and the void he leaves is large and deep. This novel is at times more violent-filled than his previous Wallander books, but never gratuitous. I think the most vulnerable moment is when Linda recalls her father hitting her mother. It's tough to visualize Wallander doing this. But also it makes real the cost of his chosen profession. It's an unexpected gift in the Wallander series.

Henning Mankell is, for me, a hit-and-miss writer. While I’ve enjoyed the Wallander series (about a detective in Ystad), I haven’t particularly liked his other novels. Mankell tends to focus on the darkest aspects of the human psyche, and without the narrative device of the investigator (Kurt or, in this case, Linda Wallander), I can’t find much positive to hold on to, which is why I avoid the non-Wallander books these days. I would definitely recommend reading the other books in Wallander serie...

The first and last Kurt Wallander book from Henning Mankell that features Wallander's daughter Linda, just on the cusp of her career. Intended to be the first in a trilogy, Mankell was too distraught to continue writing it when the woman who was playing Linda in a film adaptation of the book, and a good friend, committed suicide.I was a little confused about how I felt about the book in places. For the first half it was my favorite of all the nine Wallander books I have read, but then it lost st...

Mankell's novels are not bad usually, but this one was completely off the mark simply because of the main character. Linda Wallander is just graduated from the police academy and waiting through the summer until she begins her posting as a new police officer, in the same precinct as her famous detective father, Kurt Wallander. At the end of the summer, Linda entangles herself in a friend's disappearance, which (surprise, surprise) ends up tied into a case her father is working on. What irritated...

A very good crime novel, imbued with Swedish popular culture and habits yet enjoyable by international readers. The events surrounding Kurt Wallander and his daughter unfold at a thrilling pace. No character, not even cops, can feel safe. And there is some kind of magic in the way Mankell makes you subtly feel that the Scandinavian winter is approaching. Just Before The Frost.

This book, translated from the Swedish, is one of the Kurt Wallander series - Nordic noir. It’s different from the other books in the series in that the main protagonist is Wallander‘s daughter, Linda, who just graduated from the police academy. So most of the story is written from her point of view, not her father’s. There’s an interesting story about this series. The book is subtitled Linda Wallander #1, but it’s the only one. Wikipedia states that Mankell began an intended trilogy of novels w...

Mankell is one of the best ever.amazing story and a nice combination of Wallander and his daughter Linda who joins the forece.

As it turns out, Linda is an insufferable idiot and Kurt a permanently angry man. I normally like Wallander books but this one was exasperating. Two stars.

This is my first novel by Henning Mankell, and it is the tenth in the Kurt Wallander Crime Series. This book introduces Kurt's daughter, Linda, who has recently finished police training, and is ready to begin her career in law enforcement. The prologue to BEFORE THE FROST is set on the Jonestown compound in Guyana in 1978 right after the massacre. A crazed and demented member of The People's Temple escapes the killings, and travels to the US, and on to Sweden to form his own murderous Christian

I am pretty sure I read this a few years back and I may not have added it for some reason. I seem to know the cover well and the name jumped out of me in memory. I wish the summary went a little further which would help for sure if I read it or not. Hard to figure out which star to put on it. I know I liked it , but did I like it enough for the fourth star? 3.5

I don't think I can correctly describe how I feel about this book. It was strange and just felt "off" in a number of places. Normally I really like Swedish crime novels and was really looking forward to the first by this author. I wish I hadn't started with this one, although, now they can probably only get better.I think I could enjoy the character of Kurt Wallander in another setting where he is not overshadowed by the annoying character of his daughter Linda Wallander. She is 30 but comes acr...

I really recommend reading the Wallender books in order -- and this is the last. It's actually mostly from Linda, Wallender's daughter's, viewpoint and is very telling about the great man. This is my favorite of the books for that reason. What is so wonderful about this series is that, although you get a well crafted mystery, you also get deep insight about the character of Wallender. Compared to the Sue Grafton alphabet series, this is head and shoulders above. Kinsey is a fairly static charact...

I've been waiting a long time to read first Linda Wallander mystery. I've always liked her character, particularly in the BBC version of the Wallander mysteries, and I was worried Henning Mankell's elevating of Linda to a place of prominence would be diminishing for me. That seems paradoxical, I know, but there are some characters who just shouldn't be leads. My fears that Linda was such a character were misplaced. In fact, having so much prior knowledge of Linda made for a much richer "first no...

Detective Kurt Wallander's daughter Linda is about to join him on the police force in the town of Ystad in southern Sweden, and while she is waiting to start work Linda re-establishes contact with a couple of old school friends, Anna and Zeba. Then Anna says she thiinks she has seen her father, who had been missing for many years, and shortly afterwards goes missing herself. Linda begins searching for Anna, and thinks her disappearance may be linked to a case her father is working on, of animals...

I like Mankell, but this book seems to have fallen into the "Silence-of-the-Lambs-Syndrome" that seems to have become endemic. It's not enough to have someone get killed in the heat of passion or for greed. Now killers have to have killed hundreds, kill animals, butcher little children, bring about the end of the world, etc., etc. I hate to break it to these authors, but evil is much more prosaic and often very subtle. You don't have to create monsters to write intelligently. Adolf Eichmann was