Sidetracked (Swedish: Villospår) was published by Ordfront in 1995 and is widely considered the finest novel in the Wallander series — the book where Mankell’s social analysis, detective plotting, and character study achieve perfect balance. The novel opens with two shocking scenes: a teenage girl douses herself with gasoline and self-immolates in a rapeseed field while Wallander watches helplessly; and an art dealer is murdered with an axe and scalped.
The two events are connected by the novel’s central theme: violence against the young, violence that society refuses to see or acknowledge. The serial killer targets men who have abused their positions of power — politicians, businessmen, professionals — and the scalping is a ritual of exposure, stripping away the respectable surface to reveal the ugly truth beneath. Wallander must solve the murders while simultaneously investigating why a young girl chose to burn herself to death rather than continue living in Swedish society.
Mankell’s social diagnosis is at its sharpest here: Sweden’s vaunted welfare state has failed its most vulnerable members — the young, the immigrant, the poor — and the violence of the serial killer, however monstrous, is presented as a response to a more fundamental social violence that the comfortable middle class refuses to acknowledge. Wallander’s investigation is thus both criminal (catching a killer) and existential (understanding what has gone wrong with his society).
Collecting Sidetracked
First Swedish edition (Ordfront, Stockholm, 1995): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First Swedish edition: $40–$100
- First English edition (New Press, 1999): $25–$60
- First UK edition (Harvill, 1999): $20–$50