• The Return of the Dancing Master

  • By: Henning Mankell
  • Narrated by: Grover Gardner
  • Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (1,199 ratings)

Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.
The Return of the Dancing Master  By  cover art

The Return of the Dancing Master

By: Henning Mankell
Narrated by: Grover Gardner
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $17.90

Buy for $17.90

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

When retired policeman Herbert Molin is found brutally slaughtered on his remote farm in the northern forests of Sweden, police find strange tracks in the snow, as if someone had been practicing the tango. Stefan Lindman, a young police officer recently diagnosed with mouth cancer, decides to investigate the murder of his former colleague, but is soon enmeshed in a mystifying case with no witnesses and no apparent motives. Terrified of the disease that could take his life, Lindman becomes more and more reckless as he unearths the chilling links between Molin's death and an underground neo-Nazi network that runs further and deeper than he could ever have imagined.
©2003 Laurie Thompson (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about The Return of the Dancing Master

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    539
  • 4 Stars
    410
  • 3 Stars
    187
  • 2 Stars
    46
  • 1 Stars
    17
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    487
  • 4 Stars
    296
  • 3 Stars
    94
  • 2 Stars
    26
  • 1 Stars
    21
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    442
  • 4 Stars
    307
  • 3 Stars
    118
  • 2 Stars
    41
  • 1 Stars
    13

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Good history, great writing

Although the Nazis called themselves National Socialists they were the opposite: fascists.
On the political spectrum fascists would be considered "extreme right", socialists "far left", and communists "extreme left". Mankell knows his history.

I love Mankell's novels precisely because of the dark Scandinavian mood. Kurt Wallander, the main character in many of his books, is a haunting portrait of a detective in his 50s who is questioning his life, his work, and the personal price it has extracted. He feels a duty to society to take on the difficult, exhausting, and grisly task of solving murders. He worries about what may be the breakdown of modern society and he is not sure his work has any measurable effect. His country is coping with major societal shifts resulting from the dissolution of the USSR, immigration, and globalization. His loneliness and depression are palpable yet he yearns for hope, meaning, and connection. I come away with a respect for the emotional honesty of a character that thinks and feels rather some two dimensional "shoot 'em up" type hero. I wonder about the people who tackle these issues in real life and what we ask of them.

Stefan Lindman, the protagonist in this book, is facing somewhat similar personal issues because of the possibility of death but he can bounce back more easily because of his relative youth. He has to grapple with evil, past and present, memory, retribution, and forgiveness. I find Wallander a more compelling character but I will take Mankell's writing however I can get it. Paradoxically, when I finish these books I feel rejuvenated and grateful for my life.

If you enjoy these books you may also like The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

43 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Plodding. Ponderous. Heavy. Slow.

This book is about two murders. They happen in Sweden. The people have Swedish names. The places have Swedish names. One dog is gutted. Another disappears. One detective thinks. Another detective thinks. Mr. Gardner reads. People drive places. It is cold. An old man who dances with a doll dies. Another who plays the violin dies. Decades go by, while you are listening. You wait for something interesting to happen. It does not. There is an attempt to tell a story about the Nazi years. Some people are nice. Some are not. You have no desire to visit Sweden, if this is what it's like. They do make good cars. Mr. Mankell has written good books. This is not one of them. You might fall asleep while listening to this. You could sleep eight hours, wake up, and not have missed anything.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Bad job of translation!

The person who translated this Mankell novel did him no favors. Poor word choices and an obsessive dedication to word-for-word translation rendered the dialogue wooden and the narrative ponderous. Certainly a good translator will capture the culture differences reflected in the original language and recreate the Swedish forthrightness, introspection, and coolness, but this translation left the reader nothing to work with and flattened an otherwise entertaining read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

18 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Good, but Author Has Better

This is a very good read of a good, but not great book. The story is gripping although the main character gets a bit whiny. While his self-pity and self-adsorption were key components of the character, Mankell could have been a little more subtle. After a few hours you just want to slap him. The reader does a good job of bringing the story to life and the story (whininess notwithstanding) keeps your interest. The book defintiely plays to Scandanavian paranoias that seem a bit less shocking in translation. I liked the book without loving it. The author has done better.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Passable plot, bad history.

I give this novel a second star only because its ending is exciting.

Before that, it is s-l-o-w and depressing and only partly because detective Stefan Lindman has cancer. He is self-involved, treats his faithful girlfriend badly, and, according to the text, has no close friends. Cheerful characters are few and far between. In the one happy marriage portrayed, the spouses live apart. If this is Sweden, it's a gloomy place. The cancer functions as a plot device to account for Lindman missing some obvious clues.

The history portrayed in this book is almost laughably wrong. For example, the author has a Nazi character exclaim, "Those [bleep] socialists!" The author either doesn't know or hopes his readers won't know that "Nazi" is short for "Nationalsozialistische," or National Socialist. He has Swedes going to fight with the Nazis because they oppose Bolshevism -- when the difference is that Bolsheviks were international, not national, socialists. Stalin differed from Hitler mainly in lacking the means to pursue wars of conquest.

One is tempted to believe that the author deliberately distorts history because he also deals in despicable stereotypes. Anyone concerned about unfettered immigration is deemed a racist crypto-Nazi. Never mind that illegal immigrants in Europe largely have the same pale skin as the natives.

A minor annoyance is that the translation is British ("lorries" have "bonnets") but the narrator is American. Thus he pronounces the Brit term for cel phone "mobil," not "mob-eye-l," and a certain measure of distance "kil-oh-ME-ter" instead of "kil-AH-met-er."

The plot was passable enough to keep me listening until I reached that exciting ending. If you don't care to spend hours with a morose protagonist, however, give this novel a pass.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent

Henning Mankell is just one of the best detective writers in the genre. This book is exceptional. The main character isn't quite as fascinating as Kurt Wallander, but he is fascinating for his own reasons. From the tension of a human trying to figure out his own life while solving crimes, to the horrific nature of the crimes and the incredible stories behind them, this is just worth the read.

Mankell's new hero is troubled, flawed, likable, and at times not very nice. The villain is sympathetic, and all the side characters have their own flaws and virtues. There are almost no points where it feels like the writer is padding the story just to make it longer. It's a well-told story with excellent characters and a disturbing premise.

The translation seems to have been more for the UK's version of English than the US's, but anyone who watched Harry Potter will follow it. There are some places a phrase sounds awkwardly translated. Not enough to distract, but enough to notice.

Overall, I love this writer and this book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Just Mediocre

I enjoy the Wallender series by Mr. Mankell, but this one introduced a new lead character named Lindman. Overall, the audio book just wasn't interesting enough for 13+ hours. I actually dozed off a few times while listening to the book and didn't bother to go back to listen to what I missed. It ended up not mattering at all. There is a lot of repetition and scenes that go on and on with little information. Lindman, a visiting policeman, is interested in his former co-worker's murder. He is supposed to be helping the local detective, but doesn't tell the detective all the information he discovers. His justifications for holding back information are strange. Lots of coincidences happen and I see clues that the detectives ignore.

Unfortunately, the narration was only acceptable. It was more of a monotone reading instead of a performance. There was no change of voice for different characters, male or female. The strange choice of words appears to be a very bad translation of some parts of the book.

There was some interesting history about Sweden's participation in WWII. In the future, I will make sure my next choice of a Mankell book is from the Wallender series.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The best of Mankell

I have spent a lot of time with Henning Mankell and his characters and I think this is his best story. I have listened to this book a number of times and will again. If you enjoy Swedish stories, sit back and get ready for a complex piece of work..

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

A Good Series

Most enjoyable if narrated by some one other than Dick Hill.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

I couldn't finish it. The story dragged on

Terrible. I only got a few chapters in and I just dreaded picking it up

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful