A triple ending

Last week at the beach, I finished Before the Frost by Henning Mankell. Mankell was a mystery writer but also the author other fiction, children's books, films, and plays. His primary mystery series was Inspector Kurt Wallander of Ystad, Sweden. There is an echo in Kurt Wallander of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's Martin Beck whom I read as a child when living in Sweden in the seventies.

Wallander is both a quietly troubled person with the normal range of sufferings and setbacks, yet is also very relatable in a Lutheran way.

His daughter, Linda Wallander, with whom he has a tense relationship, has decided to also become a policeman and this is the first in a planned trilogy or Linda and Kurt Wallander mysteries. From the blurb.

In this latest atmospheric thriller, Kurt Wallander and his daughter Linda join forces to search for a religious fanatic on a murder spree. Just graduated from the police academy, Linda Wallander returns to Skane to join the police force, and she already shows all the hallmarks of her father--the maverick approach, the flaring temper. Before she even starts work she becomes embroiled in the case of her childhood friend Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared. As the case her father is working on dovetails with her own, something far more dangerous than either could have imagined begins to emerge. They soon find themselves forced to confront a group of extremists bent on punishing the world's sinners.

Well written, firmly paced, very enjoyable.

Having finished it, I check out Mankell's wikipedia to make sure I have some of my facts right and discover that this is in fact a triple ending.

I finished the book.

But it was to have been the first in a series.

However, following the suicide of Johanna Sällström, the actress playing the character at the time in the Swedish TV series, Mankell was so distraught that he decided to abandon the series after only the first novel.

I am sorry to discover that.

Even sorrier to discover that Mankell himself passed away in 2015.

Fortunately there are some of his books I have not yet read but it is always a reassurance to know there are writers out there producing good new works and a sadness to discover when they have passed.