Book Club Discussion Questions
For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Background and our BookBrowse Review of Before The Frost.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
About This Book
Fans of
Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series have two reasons to rejoice at
the appearance of his new novel,
Before the Frost. Kurt Wallander
is back, as good as ever, and now he is joined by his daughter Linda,
who has just graduated from the police academy and is eager to begin her
careerand to prove herself to her father.
In one of Mankell's most compelling and suspenseful tales, Linda
Wallander finds herself drawn into a plot that threatens the lives of
two of her closest friends and, indeed, her own. Just a few days shy of
officially joining the Ystad police force, she is given a vivid and
terrifying preview of the difficulties and dangers of the work that
awaits her. She expects to start out dealing with nothing more
challenging than breaking up drunken street fights, but when her friend
Anna Westin disappears, and when the police start receiving bizarre
reports of animalsswans, a calf, cats in a pet storebeing set on fire,
followed by a grisly murder deep in the woods, Linda is plunged into the
center of a case that seems as unsolvable as it is brutal. While Kurt
Wallander tries to piece these macabre reports together, Linda
undertakes her own investigation of Anna's disappearance and learns that
the friend she thought she knew so well is becoming increasingly
difficult to fathom and trust. Soon a woman is found ritualistically
murdered in a church, a mutual friend of Anna and Linda is abducted, and
the case takes on a desperate urgency. Linda, her father, and the rest
of the Ystad police are faced with an array of seemingly disconnected
and motiveless crimes. As Linda and her father make the connections
between them, they uncover an apocalyptic plan that has its beginnings
in the 1978 mass suicide of Jim Jones's followers in Guyana.
Bound up in these mysterious crimes are some essential human mysteries
that Mankell explores with extraordinary psychological acumenthe
father-daughter relationship, religious fanaticism, the search for
meaning, and the ultimate unknowability of human beings, whether
friends, family, or oneself.
Discussion Questions
- What kind
of woman is Linda Wallander? In what ways is she both like and unlike
her father? What is the appeal of reading about a policewoman in a genre
dominated by men?
- How does Before the Frost illuminate the growing religious
violence around the world, from the Christian Right's bombing of
abortion clinics here in the United States to the Islamic
fundamentalists campaign of terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere?
What does the novel reveal about the motives and psychology of religious
extremists?
- In what ways does Linda Wallander prove herself throughout the
novel? At which crucial moments does her willingness to trust her
intuition enable her to make breakthroughs in the case? Could the case
have been solved without Linda?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.