By the time the country’s foreign minister Anna
Lindh was stabbed to death in September 2003 while shopping, the notion
of Sweden as being in possession of some form of immunity certificate
that shielded it from what other societies were susceptible to had
dissipated. No longer could it be conceived of as a peaceful place
apart.
This book sits comfortably in the niche of spy novels as well as pitching its tent in the traditional genre of crime fiction. The characters, and there are many of them, are well developed. The one drawback is there is a tendency for some of them not to realise their potential to the full. As this is but the first in a trilogy hopefully they will re-emerge rather than having been written out of the script.
While the death that holds the reader’s attention throughout this book is that of an American journalist, there is no real disguising its real purpose: this novel explores the murder of Olaf Palme.
There are around 600 pages to the book which puts it on the longish side. Finding the time to complete it rather than finding it difficult to read is what prolonged it for me and probably diminished the enjoyment to be derived from it. That is a reader problem not a writer one. Yet uncertainty remains as to what makes this novel work. It has the potential to crash on takeoff with so many side narratives and characters all ploughing their own furrow. Yet it does work and works well. The author, who for 16 years was a professor in criminology at the Swedish National Police Board, brings a certain dry style to his writing which is balanced by an equally dry humour. The end product is a well oiled narrative that never jars with the literacy senses. The book’s success probably lies in the characters Persson manages to create, many of them obnoxious, seedy and sleazy, and most of whom are cops.
To underline the shadowy world the characters are denizens of, all of them seem to have a tendency to think rather than vent their thoughts. Everybody holds their cards tightly to their chests. The author repeatedly and at times irritatingly announces what people are thinking during a conversation although the thought never leaves their lips. ‘But he didn’t say that’ is a constant qualification throughout.
When an American journalist falls from the 16th floor of his Stockholm accommodation, suspicion is aroused by the fact that one of his shoes follows ... a few seconds later ... and kills a dog. Why the time lag? In one of the shoes was a hollowed out heel containing a note with a message for one of Stockholm’s senior detectives, Lars Johansson who had never heard of the victim. While the official narrative had suicide inscribed on it, investigations proceed along the lines that it might have been something else. Johansson took a trip to New York for a police conference but while there visited the former partner of Krassner to get a better feel for the victim. It is clear he would not mind getting a feel for her as well but...
Johansson is the all round good guy here, the type mothers but perhaps not wives dote on. Divorced, he has an interest in women which doesn’t seem to reach fruition. He thinks about them more than he dates them. But his perspective is much healthier than the misogynistic manipulator from the secret police which makes for an interesting character contrast.
John P. Krasner was the nephew of a US Intelligence agent who had once been a handler for a source who later went on to become one of Sweden’s most prominent political personalities. The US had for long been engaged in a European theatre battle in the shadows with the USSR in the post war period. Krasner before he died had been working on a book that would have exposed the personality as an erstwhile agent for another state: quite possibly a motive for tossing him out a window.
When the interest is initially developed through the character Lars Johansson, the lanes shift and suddenly the reader is drawn into the world of SePo, the Swedish Secret Police and its “external operation” which is monitoring the rise of a far right element within the country’s police. There is a sense of FFS at the initial cold turkey prompted by withdrawal from Johansson’s character but Erik Berg and Claes Waltin at SePo soon become an adequate substitute. They seem to work well together but the turf war tension exists and Berg comes to view Waltin as Lenin did Stalin, a likely successor but not the preferred one. In his personal life Waltin, an inveterate hater of his now late mother, indulges his dark domineering passion either for younger female partners in the police or the wives of fellow cops. One of them fed up with being spanked and left with a sore jaxy wishes he would just screw like everybody else. His urge to dominate just doesn’t permit that.
The relationships between Berg and the Prime Minister’s shrewd special advisor whose name remains undisclosed is slow, yet tense rather than torturous. The reader might just benefit from a liberal dose of the type of patience a chess aficionado is known for. Moves, countermoves, stratagems and subterfuge abound.
Persson is a former cop and explores through the novel just how fit for purpose the Swedish Intelligence services was in the run up to the murder of Palme. With skill and methodological persistence he has created a longing the reader does not want to end.
Leif G.W. Persson, 2010, Between Summer's Longing And Winter's End. Transworld: London. ISBN: 978-0-552-77468-0.
To underline the shadowy world the characters are denizens of, all of them seem to have a tendency to think rather than vent their thoughts. Everybody holds their cards tightly to their chests. The author repeatedly and at times irritatingly announces what people are thinking during a conversation although the thought never leaves their lips. ‘But he didn’t say that’ is a constant qualification throughout.
When an American journalist falls from the 16th floor of his Stockholm accommodation, suspicion is aroused by the fact that one of his shoes follows ... a few seconds later ... and kills a dog. Why the time lag? In one of the shoes was a hollowed out heel containing a note with a message for one of Stockholm’s senior detectives, Lars Johansson who had never heard of the victim. While the official narrative had suicide inscribed on it, investigations proceed along the lines that it might have been something else. Johansson took a trip to New York for a police conference but while there visited the former partner of Krassner to get a better feel for the victim. It is clear he would not mind getting a feel for her as well but...
Johansson is the all round good guy here, the type mothers but perhaps not wives dote on. Divorced, he has an interest in women which doesn’t seem to reach fruition. He thinks about them more than he dates them. But his perspective is much healthier than the misogynistic manipulator from the secret police which makes for an interesting character contrast.
John P. Krasner was the nephew of a US Intelligence agent who had once been a handler for a source who later went on to become one of Sweden’s most prominent political personalities. The US had for long been engaged in a European theatre battle in the shadows with the USSR in the post war period. Krasner before he died had been working on a book that would have exposed the personality as an erstwhile agent for another state: quite possibly a motive for tossing him out a window.
When the interest is initially developed through the character Lars Johansson, the lanes shift and suddenly the reader is drawn into the world of SePo, the Swedish Secret Police and its “external operation” which is monitoring the rise of a far right element within the country’s police. There is a sense of FFS at the initial cold turkey prompted by withdrawal from Johansson’s character but Erik Berg and Claes Waltin at SePo soon become an adequate substitute. They seem to work well together but the turf war tension exists and Berg comes to view Waltin as Lenin did Stalin, a likely successor but not the preferred one. In his personal life Waltin, an inveterate hater of his now late mother, indulges his dark domineering passion either for younger female partners in the police or the wives of fellow cops. One of them fed up with being spanked and left with a sore jaxy wishes he would just screw like everybody else. His urge to dominate just doesn’t permit that.
The relationships between Berg and the Prime Minister’s shrewd special advisor whose name remains undisclosed is slow, yet tense rather than torturous. The reader might just benefit from a liberal dose of the type of patience a chess aficionado is known for. Moves, countermoves, stratagems and subterfuge abound.
Persson is a former cop and explores through the novel just how fit for purpose the Swedish Intelligence services was in the run up to the murder of Palme. With skill and methodological persistence he has created a longing the reader does not want to end.
Leif G.W. Persson, 2010, Between Summer's Longing And Winter's End. Transworld: London. ISBN: 978-0-552-77468-0.
Excellent review Anthony,like the ladies in the windows in Amsterdam you have exposed enough to arouse a desire to see this book through,whatever the cost,I kind of have the impression a cara that you are fixated on the Scandinavian crime genre,are you in search of another Steig Larsson (no bad thing),if this book and if it is part of a trilogy comes anywhere near Larsson,s superb work then it definitely will have me ranting on about it .
ReplyDeleteMarty,
ReplyDeleteI do enjoy Scandinavian crime fiction, although I am just finishing of a Lynda La Plante one at the minute and want to start a Sam Miller one shortly. But sure, I am lifting them for ten minutes here and ten there. Need to be in a cell to get time to read a book!!