Leif G. W. Persson

The first in a trilogy of novels centered around the investigations of a Swedish police officer, Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström, of the National Murder Squad. "It's the dead of summer in the sleepy town of Växjö when twenty-year-old police cadet Linda Wallin is found lying facedown in her mother's apartment, brutally murdered and raped. With no clear motive or suspect in sight, a series of bureaucratic mix-ups leads the National Crime Unit to send Bäckström and his team into the countryside to solve the case. The ever-irritable Bäckström leaves behind his beloved goldfish, checks into a local hotel, and begins to reconstruct the night of Linda's murder. But with more than a few bottles in tow, and a constantly growling stomach to look after, things don't go so well, and Bäckström has to rely on the help of his colleagues to solve the crime--no matter how angry that makes him" -- Page of cover.

From the grand master of Scandinavian crime fiction - and one of the best crime writers of our time-a new critically acclaimed novel centered around the unsolved murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986. It's August 2007, and Lars Martin Johansson, chief of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Sweden has opened the files on the unsolved murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme. With his retirement quickly closing in, Johansson forms a new group comprised of a few trustworthy detectives who doggedly wade through mountains of paperwork and pursue new leads in a case that has all but gone cold despite the open wound the assassination has left on the consciousness of Swedish society. Yet the closer the group gets to the truth, the more Johansson compromises the greater good for personal gain, becoming a pawn for the private vendetta of a shady political spin doctor.

Martin Johansson, haut responsable de la police, décide de rouvrir discrètement l'enquête sur l'affaire la plus célèbre de Suède, jamais élucidée : le meurtre du Premier ministre Olof Palme, en 1986.

Thinking something is off about a seemingly open and shut case of a dead alcoholic, Swedish detective Evert Backstrom has his hunch validated when the boy who found the body disappears.

When a Swedish civil servant is murdered, the two leading detectives on the case, Anna Holt and Bo Jarnebring, find their investigation hastily shelved by an incompetent and corrupt senior investigator. Ten years later, Lars Johansson, having just joined the Swedish Security Police, decides to tie up a few loose ends left behind by his predecessor: specifically, two files on Swedes who had allegedly collaborated on the 1975 takeover of the West German embassy.

"A galvanizing new thriller from the internationally acclaimed and best-selling author--a stand-alone novel that finds legendary Swedish homicide detective Lars Martin Johansson racing against time to solve one final murder. In the National Criminal Investigation Department he was known as "the man who sees around corners." Now Johansson is retired, living in the country, his police days behind him. Or so he thinks. When he finds himself in the hospital having suffered a stroke, tests revealing heart problems as well, the only thing that saves him from despair is his doctor's interest in an unsolved murder case from years before. The victim was a nine-year-old girl, raped and strangled to death, and now Johansson determines to solve the crime despite his condition. He launches an informal investigation from his hospital bed--with the help of Matilda, a wannabe Lisbeth Salander, and Max, an orphan personally invested in child-abuse cases--and begins to draw a web of connections between sex tourism, a deceased opera singer, and a self-made millionaire. And as he draws closer to solving the crime, he finds that he is confronting not just a case, but his own mortality."

The small, fat and primitive detective Evert Backstrom is finally given his fifteen minutes of fame by way of his patented combination of laziness, luck, and an unbelievable sense of timing. A seemingly ordinary murder puzzles Backstrom, who is struggling with strict orders from his doctor to lead a healthier life. His gut feeling proves him right: within days, his team has another murder linked to the first on their hands, and reports of alleged ties to a Securicor heist gone out of control, killing two. The nation needs a hero, and the newly appointed head of the Vasterort police force Anna Holt needs somebody to kill the dragon for her. Who better to heed to the task than Evert Backstrom: self-sufficient, ostentatious, devoid of morals, Hawaii shirt-clad, and, latterly, armed?