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.
It's the dead of summer in the sleepy town of Växjö when twenty-year-old
police cadet Linda Wallin is found lying facedown in her mother's
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
Linda's murder. But with more than a few bottles in tow, and a
constantly growling stomach to look after, things don't 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.