Jarnebring & Johansson

Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End is the first novel in a trilogy that is the defining account of the unsolved assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme in 1986 that still haunts the collective Swedish memory. Beginning with the death of an unknown American citizen in Stockholm, Persson slowly unravels the complex web of international espionage, greed, sheer incompetence and a poorly constructed Swedish intelligence force, that in this fiction lead to the murder of the Prime Minister.

In 1975, six young people stormed the West German embassy in Stockholm, taking the entire staff hostage. They demanded the immediate release of members of the Baader- Meinhof group being held as prisoners in West Germany, but twelve hours into the siege, the embassy was blown up, two hostages were dead, and many others were injured, including the captors. Thus begins Leif GW Persson’s Another Time, Another Life.

Stockholm1975: Six young people take the entire staff of the West German embassy hostage, demanding that the Baader-Meinhof members being held as prisoners in West Germany be released immediately. The long siege ends with the deaths of two hostages and the wounding of several others, including the captors. 1989: 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.

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.

It's August 2007, and Lars Martin Johansson, chief of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Sweden, is determined once again to reopen the dusty files on the unsolved murder of Prime Minister Palme. With his retirement quickly approaching, 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. But the closer the group gets to the truth, the more Johansson compromises the greater good for personal gain, becoming a pawn in the private vendetta of a shady political spin doctor.

In the middle of an unusually hot Swedish summer, a young woman studying at the Vaxjo Police Academy is brutally murdered. Police Inspector Evert Bäckström is unwillingly drafted in from Stockholm to head up the investigation. Egotistical, vain and utterly prejudiced against everything, Bäckström is a man who has no sense of duty or responsibility, thinks everyone with the exception of himself is an imbecile and is only really capable of warm feelings towards his pet goldfish and the nearest bottle of liquor.

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.

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.