One Step Behind is a 1997 crime novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell, the 7th in his acclaimed Inspector Wallander series.

Excellent.

An intriguing plot with Wallander facing serious personal health problems.

Two young women and one young man, inexplicably dressed as the nobility of Sweden did during the reign of Gustavus III, are found dead, each slain with a single bullet, their bodies half consumed by animals in the wilderness.

Wallander is horrified when he makes a connection between the crime and his close friend and colleague Svedberg, and after the latter is found savagely murdered …

related – Director Ingmar Bergman was the author’s father-in-law.

I watched all 4 seasons of Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh as the eponymous police inspector.

12 episodes, each more like a film than TV show. Shot in Sweden over ten years.

All 12 are great. If anything, I like the final shows best as Kurt learns he has type 2 Diabetes. And fears he’s going to be facing dementia.

Can he stay at work?

Obviously, Branagh is an excellent actor. He’s been nominated for 5 Academy Awards and 5 Golden Globes.

But I’ve always been slightly turned off by egomania.

That said, for me Wallander is his best work I’ve seen. He won the 2017 International Emmy Best Performance by an Actor for the role.

Click PLAY or get some glimpses on YouTube.

The 6th in his acclaimed Inspector Wallander series.

The series gets better and better, seems to me.

The Fifth Woman:

A sadistic serial killer has been preying on men, beginning with a retired car salesman whose interests appear to be limited to bird watching and poetry and whose body was discovered in a punji stick pit; and continuing with a flower shop manager, found starved and garrotted in the woods.

Wallander soon realises both men have a past record of violence towards women, and after another man is drowned in a lake, he goes on the hunt for an avenging angel…

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I’ve been working my way through the Inspector Kurt Wallander series, starting with Faceless Killers.

Set in Sweden.

Man Who Smiled is #4 — was easily best so far.

Sidetracked #5 almost as good. An intriguing plot, wbell told.

In the sweltering Swedish summer of 1994, a sadistic serial killer begins preying on elderly, successful men, violently slaughtering them with an axe before collecting their scalps as trophies …

I signed up for a free month of Britbox to try Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh as the eponymous police inspector.

First episode is based on the #5 book Sidetracked.

Emmy-award-winning director Philip Martin was hired as lead director. Martin worked with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle to establish a visual style for the series. …

Like Branagh, Philip Martin did not watch any of the Swedish-language Wallander films so that he could bring a fresh interpretation to the films.

It is well done.

Branagh, born in Belfast, is terrific. Perfect as the flawed detective with many demons.

But Tom Hiddleston tends to steal every scene in which he appears.

It was Branagh who later asked Hiddleston to audition for the film Thor.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.