The irascible, obdurate, and very thirsty Detective Superintendent Evert Backstrom 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 Vaxjo 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 Backstrom and his team into the countryside to solve the case. The ever-irritable Backstrom 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 Backstrom has to rely on the help of his colleagues to solve the crime no matter how angry that makes him."