With the last book in the series Leif GW Persson calls the Fall of the Welfare State, he finally, as promised, gets to the actual assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986. The novel begins in 2007, when Chief of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation Lars Martin Johansson (whom we have met in the two previous books) decides it is about time someone solved Palme’s murder.
Most Swedes believe the murderer was a madman named Christer Petersson. But Johansson doesn’t believe this, and he has brought together a team of Superintendent Anna Holt and Chief Inspectors Lisa Mattei and Jan Lewin to try to solve the crime before the statute of limitations expires.
This excellent police procedural, like the others in the series, is based on actual events and written by the man considered the foremost expert on crime in Sweden. To see if anything was missed, the detectives laboriously untangle the threads of various “tracks,” or theories of the crime, that were followed during the original investigation. Almost immediately they find evidence of a witness that may indicate the assassin took a different escape route than prevously believed. The witness’ testimony was discounted because she was a drug addict and prostitute. Although struggling with difficulties of an unofficial case and long-dead witnesses, the detectives make impressive strides.
In the meantime, Johansson explores the perilous channels of political intrigue, for Persson’s novel makes an almost perfect combination of political thriller and police procedural. In this novel, we encounter some of the people whose exploits were featured in the previous two, including the ridiculous buffoon Bäckström, who thinks every crime has to do with money or sex, and the dangerous Waltin, long dead but important to the case.
This is an excellent series. Its political ramifications are similiar to those of the works of Stieg Larsson. It is well written, sometimes funny, and also compelling.
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