Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End: The Story of a Crime Book

The first novel in a trilogy that has become the defining account of the unsolved 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme—an event that still haunts the collective Swedish memory.

Beginning with the death of an unknown American citizen in Stockholm, Leif G.W. Persson slowly unravels the complex web of international espionage, greed, sheer incompetence, and work by a poorly constructed Swedish intelligence force that in this fiction lead to the murder of the prime minister. Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End is a riveting insider's combination of black satire, thriller, psychological drama, and police procedural about the biggest police investigation in recorded history.

Publishers Weekly

The apparent suicide of an American journalist in 1970s Stockholm propels Persson's ponderous English debut, the first of a trilogy. The victim, John Krassner, was working on a book detailing the exploits of his uncle, Col. John Buchanan, an OSS agent in the years following WWII and Buchanan's ties to a now high-ranking Swedish politician known by the code name "Pilgrim." The Swedish secret police, who were hearing chatter concerning threats to the Swedish prime minister, had been keeping an eye on Krassner at the time of his death. Curious about Krassner after discovering a personal connection to the case, police superintendent Lars Johansson begins his own inquiry and unearths more than he bargained for, including disparate pieces of a vast political conspiracy. In contrast to the work of Stieg Larsson, this thriller lacks both memorable characters and a streamlined plot. (Sept.)