This assortment of five stories traces the growth of Swedish Inspector Kurt Wallander right into a first-rate detective, from rookie cop to young father to middle-aged divorcé, illuminating new facets of a now-canonical character.

In “Wallander’s First Case,” the twenty-one-year-old patrolman’s first homicide case involves his next-door neighbor, seemingly dead by his own hand. Wallander is definitely a young dad confronting an urgent threat on Christmas Eve in “THE PERSON with the Face mask.” In “THE PERSON in the about The Pyramid: And 4 Additional Kurt Wallander Mysteries Beach,” he is around the brink of middle age group and troubled with a distant wife as he unravels why a depressed man was poisoned. Newly separated in “The Death of the Photographer,” he investigates the murder of the local professional photographer and discovers some well concealed secrets. In “The Pyramid” he is the veteran detective uncovering contacts between a downed aircraft and the assassination of two elderly sisters. Over the course of these five tales, Wallander makes his own like a murder detective, described by his simultaneously methodical and instinctive function, even while he finds himself more and more haunted from witnessing the most severe aspects of an atomized culture.

Written from the initial perspective of the author looking back upon his own creation to find his origins, these mysteries are vintage Mankell and essential reading for any Wallander fans. The Pyramid is an excellent screen of Mankell’s virtuosic capabilities as an recognized master of the police procedural.