The acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries now gives us an electrifying stand-alone thriller that takes off into a sweeping international drama.

January 2006. In the Swedish hamlet of Hesjövallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene. Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: her grandparents, the Andréns, are among the victims. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the murders. But when Birgitta discovers the diary of another Andrén - a gang master on the American transcontinental railway in the nineteenth century - that describes the cruel treatment of Chinese slave-workers, she is determined to uncover what she suspects is a more complicated truth.

The investigation leads to modern-day Beijing and its highest echelons of power, to Zimbabwe and Mozambique. But the narrative also takes us back 150 years, into a history that will ensnare Birgitta as she draws ever closer to solving the Hesjövallen murders.

This is Henning Mankell at the height of his powers.