LARS MARTIN JOHANSSON is a living legend. Cunning and perceptive, always one step ahead, he was known in the National Criminal Police as “the man who could see around corners.” But now Johansson is retired, living in the country, his police days behind him.
Or so he thinks.
After suffering a stroke, Johansson finds himself in the hospital. Tests show heart problems as well. And the only thing that can save him from despair is his doctor’s mention of an unsolved murder case from years before. The victim: an innocent nine-year-old girl.
Johansson is determined to solve the case, no matter his condition. With the help of his assistant, Matilda, an amateur detective, and Max, an orphan with a personal stake in the case, he launches an informal investigation from his hospital bed. Racing against time, he uncovers a web of connections that links sex tourism to a dead opera singer and a self-made millionaire. And as Johansson draws closer to solving the crime, he finds that he will have to confront not just a mystery but his own mortality as well.
The irascible, obdurate, and very thirsty Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström of the National Murder Squad returns in a new novel from the reigning master of Scandinavian fiction.
Its the dead of summer in the sleepy town of Växjö when twenty-year-old police cadet Linda Wallin is found lying facedown in her mothers apartment, brutally murdered and raped. With no clear motive or suspect in sight, a series of bureaucratic mix-ups causes the National Crime Unit to send Bäckström and his team into the countryside to solve the case. The ever-irritable Bäckström leaves his beloved goldfish behind, checks into a local hotel, and begins to reconstruct the night of Lindas murder. But with more than a few bottles in tow, and a constantly growling stomach to look after, things dont 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.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
