Before the frost
Before the Frost (original title: Innan frosten ) is the tenth part of the twelve-part Kurt Wallander series by the Swedish writer Henning Mankell . It was first published in Swedish in 2002 and in German in 2003. It is the only one in the series to be written from the perspective of Linda Wallander, the budding police officer and daughter of Kurt Wallander.
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Prologue: Jonestown
The prologue is a look at the events in Jonestown in November 1978, which at that time became the scene of mass murder and suicide. Erik Westin, who fled Sweden and joined Jim Jones' messianic movement , is the only one to escape.
1st part: eel dark
On August 21, 2001, burning swans fly over Lake Marebo (Marebosjö) in Skåne, Sweden . The man who set them on fire then informed the police. Kurt Wallander routinely investigates the case and takes his daughter Linda with him, but cannot find any traces on the lake in question. The case is shelved. Linda lives in her father's apartment and is preparing for her police service in Ystad, which is due to start on September 10th. Over the summer, she had renewed her friendships with Anna Westin and Lill Zeba (“Zebra”), two friends from school. At a meeting with Linda, Anna claims that she saw her father, who had been missing for 24 years , on a trip to Malmö . Linda doubts this and makes it clear to Anna.
The next day, August 27th, Anna disappeared from her apartment. Linda does not believe in a natural explanation and breaks into Anna's apartment, but cannot find any clues as to the reason for the disappearance. In the meantime, a police case has become known that bears a resemblance to the burning swans: a calf was set on fire on a farm and died. Linda is allowed to accompany her father during the investigation on site. A sadist is suspected to be the perpetrator . While searching for her friend's whereabouts, Linda has since started reading Anna's diaries. Linda discovers notes there ( perjury, Vatican ) that she does not understand. In another investigation, in which Linda takes part at the side of her father, she finds a link to the diaries: The cultural geographer Birgitta Medberg, who researches the history of paths and paths, is missing.
Linda finds a reference in one of Anna's diaries to a letter that Anna had received from Birgitta Medberg. She gains access to Medberg's apartment and finds a map of an area that Medberg allegedly wanted to explore before she disappeared. Linda drives to the forest area near Rannesholm and finds Birgitta Medberg's Vespa scooter in a parking lot. She notifies her father, with whom she then searches the forest area. In a hidden hut they finally find the dismembered body of Birgitta Medberg.
Part 2: The Void
Birgitta Medberg's severed hands are clasped in prayer. In a Bible that was in the hut there are notes that try to correct the meaning of the scriptures. Meanwhile, Linda discovers that someone must have entered Anna's apartment.
After Birgitta Medberg's body was found, Linda learns that she used to collect butterflies . A butterfly picture had disappeared from Anna's apartment, which in Linda's eyes corroborates the connection between Anna and Birgitta Medberg. The police are now also taking Anna's disappearance seriously, after Kurt Wallander had previously given Linda's fears in this regard no importance. Linda is on her way to visit Anna's mother when she hears her talking to a man through the garden window. She turns around and steps into an animal trap on the way back to the car . Anna’s mother’s statements to the police about the man’s appearance do not match Lind’s memories. In the mailbox of Anna's shared apartment in Lund , where this medicine is to be studied, Linda finds a letter with a reference to a house in Lestarp that serves as a meeting place.
Linda drives there and sees a man in the church square whom she believes she can identify with the visitor to Anna's mother. In addition, she succeeds in locating the owner of the house, which serves as a meeting place for a sect-like group of people: the Norwegian Torgeir Langaas. Linda wants to visit him in his apartment in Copenhagen , but does not find him, but is threatened and dejected. A man is convicted of the crime, but makes a false confession about the motive. In Anna's diary, Linda finds a reference to a man who lives in the same house and travels to Copenhagen again. She finds out that the confused and demented man's apartment is used as a shelter for another person. On her return from Copenhagen, a small animal shop in Ystad is set on fire. A man calls out in Norwegian: God has demanded . It is the third case in which animals were deliberately murdered.
3rd part: the rope
Suddenly Anna reappears in her apartment. She claims to have gone in search of her father, but not found him and to have finally given up hope that he is still alive. Anna is invited by the police to the interrogation that Kurt Wallander conducts. Linda and her father are of the opinion that Anna is not telling the truth on essential points. Before this investigation can be completed, dramatic events occur: Two churches in Skåne are set on fire and burn down. In one of the churches, a woman was previously strangled in a recognizable ritual murder. She can be identified as an American and wears a pendant in the shape of a sandal . Linda knows about Anna's father, Erik Westins, as a sandal maker.
Linda, Anna and Zebra meet together in a café. When the conversation falls on Zebra's child, she casually notices that she has already had an abortion . Anna reacts indignantly and leaves them.
4th part: the thirteenth tower
Linda is allowed to accompany Wallander's colleague Stefan Fredman when he asks a locksmith about a man who has commissioned the production of keys with which the perpetrators could have gained access to the two burned down churches. Then Linda learns from Anna that Zebra has disappeared and left her son behind. When Linda learns about a prostitute who was murdered in Copenhagen and whose hands were clasped in prayer, Linda is able to establish a connection between the two cases: the prostitute, like Zebra and, as will later become known, the American woman who was murdered in the church, had abortions performed. A Christian revival movement is now presumed to be the originator of the events.
Torgeir Langaas can be identified by comparing voices as the caller who set fire to the swans over Lake Marebo at the beginning of the series of violence and who was allegedly involved in the further acts alongside Erik Westin. After contacting the Norwegian authorities, the police learn that Torgeir Langaas had disappeared from his country nineteen years earlier and was the main heir of a wealthy shipowner . Zebra's disappearance is now being taken extremely seriously. It is feared that Erik Westin and his associates want to murder her for her abortion. Anna, who has since disappeared again, is also wanted by the police. A theologian examines the Bible found in the forest near Rannesholm and finds that the authors of the corrected version are looking for a "hidden truth" there.
Anna calls police headquarters and wants to talk to Linda. When both meet outside of the bureau, Anna behaves conspicuously. They part in an argument. Linda follows Anna, who is taken by a car to a house near the sea near Sandhammaren in front of her apartment . Linda hides in front of the house and learns that Erik Westin and his followers are planning to blow up thirteen domes in Sweden the next day - September 8th . With the last one a “great cleaning process” should begin. Linda wants to return, but she has been discovered and is caught by Torgeir Langaas, driven in the trunk of a car to an unknown church building and locked there in the sacristy together with the already captured zebra . Anna helps them both by giving them a cell phone. The police can use the noise of airplanes to determine the location of the church.
Zebra is said to be strangled with a rope in church . At the last moment, the police storm the church. Anna dies in the exchange of fire, Erik Westin and Torgeir Langaas escape. The police got word that a truck loaded with dynamite had driven into Lund Cathedral . However, the planned attacks on the other domes have been foiled. Torgeir Langaas commits suicide with a car while Erik Westin has not yet been caught. When Linda Wallander started her police service in Ystad on September 11, 2001, one day late, the police gathered in front of the television in the afternoon to follow a news special about the events in the USA .
Epilogue: The girl on the roof
The epilogue of the book takes place on November 23, 2001. Linda, who herself planned her suicide twice, is able to stop a sixteen-year-old girl from jumping off the roof of an apartment building.
Background and characterization
Before the frost , the first part of a whole series with Linda Wallander as the main character, Mankell did not continue. The novel is “also an answer to September 11th. It ends with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. What the author wants to say with this plot is clear: Look here, there are not only Islamic fundamentalists but also Christian ones. ”Like her father, Linda tends to act unauthorized and endanger himself - and is reprimanded by him for this. In the novel Before the Frost , the cancer inspector Stefan Lindman also appears, the main character in the detective novel The Return of the Dance Teacher , published in the same year .
success
The book was number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list for 6 weeks in 2003 .
Adaptations
On January 14, 2005, the film adaptation of the novel was first broadcast on Swedish television as a crime thriller . Before the frost , Mankell's Wallander series began . The role of Kurt Wallander was taken on for the first time by Krister Henriksson , the main role of Linda Wallander by Johanna Sällström . The German version was broadcast on June 2, 2006 by the First German Television . In 2003 Der Hörverlag published the German radio play on the book. On July 18, 2007, the play was performed for the first time under the arrangement and direction of Wolfgang Rumpf at the Berlin Criminal Theater .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Kerstin Schneider : Before the frost . In: Spiegel online . July 17, 2003.