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.

Leif GW Persson is the Grand Master of Scandinavian crime fiction. Over three decades, he has taken a scalpel to the political and social mores of Swedish society in his dark and complex crime novels. His work melds the social realism of a Balzac or a Dickens with the hard-boiled street smarts of James Ellroy. Persson is Scandinavia’s most renowned criminologist and a leading psychological profiler. He has also served as an advisor to the Swedish Ministry of Justice. Since 1991, he has been Professor at the National Swedish Police Board and is regularly consulted by media as the country’s foremost expert on crime. He is the author of nine novels. This is the first one to be translated into English.