One Step Behind

On this Midsummer's Eve, three youthful companions congregate in a forest. They happily adopt costumes to perform, or so it seems to an unseen spectator, a kind of masque in the still-sunlit Scandanavian dark. Their act is suddenly cut short by the unseen observer. He takes great care on his approach and hits three targets—three bodies and three gunshots. The killer then takes close-up shots of the graphic scene. While all is going on, the Ystad police station is in a summer slump. Inspector Wallander is finally free to take care of his failing health, although grudgingly, but his tranquility is disturbed when one of his coworkers is killed. A snapshot of three deceased young people dressed as characters leads the authorities to believe that an unidentified murderer, who has not been seen by anybody, is at large. When Wallander is compelled to go further into his colleague's personal life than he would have liked to, his inquiry uncovers something that none of his team could have predicted. Still, they are frighteningly, tantalizingly one step behind the deadly advances of a murderer Wallander would have to assume was insane if his techniques were not so exacting and his targets so precisely chosen.