Early one morning, a farmer discovers that his neighbors have been victims of an attack during the night; an old man has been bludgeoned to death, and his wife lies dying before the farmer's eyes. The only clue is the single word she utters before she dies: "foreign." In charge of the investigation is Inspector Kurt Wallander, a local detective whose personal life is a shambles. Tenacious and levelheaded in his sleuthing, he and his colleagues must contend with a wave of violent xenophobia as they search for the killer. Winner of the Sweden's Best Mystery Award and the first installment in the series that inspired the PBS program Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh, this stylishly dark police procedural from 1991 is "a superior novel—and a harbinger of great things to come" (Booklist).