The dying detective

Review by New York Times Review

MYCROFT HOLMES, Sherlock's older, fatter, smarter brother, was renowned for solving mysteries without leaving his armchair at the Diogenes Club. In Josephine Tey's "The Daughter of Time," Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard was confined to a hospital bed when he tackled the historical crime of the murdered princes in the Tower. And Rex Stout's corpulent genius, Nero Wolfe, investigated criminal cases without budging from his elegant Manhattan townhouse. The Swedish author Leif GW Persson takes up the challenge of the sitting sleuth in THE DYING DETECTIVE (Pantheon, $27.95), which features Lars Martin Johansson, once head of the National Criminal Police, but now retired and vegetating in the country. Johansson is about to bite into a spicy sausage from "the best hot-dog kiosk in Sweden" when he has a stroke that puts him in the hospital under the care of a doctor who's seriously worried about his heart. That in itself might be enough to give Johansson a heart attack, so he grasps at the chance to work on an old case, the unsolved rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl named Yasmine. "Do you think it's possible to solve a 25-year-old murder case if you're forced to lie on a sofa the whole time?" Johansson asks his former colleague and best friend, Bo Jarnebring. Well, sure it's possible, so long as the supine sleuth has friends like Bo, who digs up the police files for his old boss and drives him around to possible crime scenes. Nero Wolfe may have had Archie Goodwin to do the legwork and take his guff, but Johansson has his own minions. Besides his doting wife, Pia, there's his punked-out caregiver, Matilda, to drive him to the faceto- face interviews that are crucial to the investigation, and beefy Max to handle certain illicit errands that shall not be named. Persson wrote a hefty trilogy of deeply researched, if ponderously argued, crime novels based on the unsolved assassination of the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme. On a lesser scale, this exhaustively detailed police procedural, painstakingly translated by Neil Smith, speaks to that same inclination to dig for the truth, regardless of the personal cost, which in this case is quite high. Maybe too high. SONS ARE EXPECTED to carry on their fathers' professions in 1816 Dublin, but when 18-year-old Abigail Lawless tries to follow her father into the medical field, she has to sneak into the anatomical theater where he's dissecting a cadaver for the edification of his male students. In THE CORONER'S DAUGHTER (Pegasus Crime, $25.95), Andrew Hughes takes great relish in describing the occupational hazards of being a smart woman in restrictive times. Luckily for Abigail, her father is happy to tutor his clever girl privately. But Abigail is on her own when she applies her knowledge of human anatomy to question the supposed suicide of a housemaid who was said to have killed her illegitimate newborn child. This slender thread of a plot is sturdy enough to send Abigail all over the city in pursuit of a killer, from the wretched Lying-In Hospital, where poor women are herded into overcrowded wards, to the grand ballroom at Charlemont House, where society swells parade in all their finery. Although social class, religious fanaticism and early forensic medical procedures are all duly explored, I confess to being more thrilled by the spectacle of a life-size animatronic doll - with rotating glass eyes! - entertaining the guests at that society ball. IF FRANK MARR didn't have a drug habit, he'd probably still be with the narcotics squad of the Washington, D.C., police. But Marr is a willing slave to cocaine, so here he is, a lackadaisical private eye in David Swinson's CRIME SONG (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $26), trying to keep his coke edge while investigating the murder of his cousin, a nice kid who happened to be dealing drugs. "I certainly wouldn't want to put my lifestyle on someone else," Marr says. "It ain't for everyone." Drugs and all, Marr is easy to take, a decent guy with a sense of honor. And since Swinson is one of the best dialogue hounds in the business, Marr is also blessed with some terrific street talk. While searching for his stolen vinyl record collection, he has an extended conversation with a cabdriver that just about melts in your mouth. "How many times I gotta keep tellin' you I ain't stupid?" the driver demands. Keep talking. We hear you. THERE ARE STUNNINGdescriptions of rampaging forest fires, majestic mountain ranges and violent storms in THE WEIGHT OF NIGHT (Atria, paper, $16),Christine Carbo's rugged wilderness mystery set in Glacier National Park. If only people didn't stand in front of the landscape. Carbo's characters, a manly park police officer with a burdensome secret and a crime scene investigator with nightmares of her own, aren't the liveliest creatures in the forest, but they perform important tasks like finding the skeleton that kicks offthe mystery. It's in depicting nature's drama that Carbo's writing thrives. "This was no campfire with steady, lulling pops and crackles," she observes. "We were talking about the kind of roaring giant that presses in on you, fills your head with its freight train of noise, and makes your gut vibrate." More of that, please. MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 18, 2017]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Persson is Sweden's most renowned psychological profiler and considered the country's foremost expert on crime. He has authored a number of police procedurals centered in Stockholm that feature an ensemble cast with characters from the National Criminal Police who come and go in the novels, much like Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad detectives. The Dying Detective centers on Lars Martin Johansson, a living legend, the man who could see around corners. Now retired, he has suffered a stroke. His doctor inadvertently engages him in a cold case, the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl. He undertakes an investigation that starts out (à la Josephine Tey) in his hospital bed and then continues at home, much to the dismay of his wife and the delight of his associates. A brilliant police procedural unfolds within which Johansson must confront his mortality: What sort of life is it if you're just counting down the days to the end? Johansson manages to solve the 25-year-old crime within a month despite his fading memory and failing body, even though scores of police officers worked on it for several years. In the hands of a lesser storyteller, this novel, which takes more than 400 pages to tell, would collapse under the staggering amount of dialogue and detail, but, in Persson's telling, it is almost impossible to put down. An absolutely masterful crime novel.--Murphy, Jane Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

At the start of Persson's cleverly plotted police procedural, Lars Martin Johansson, a celebrated Stockholm investigator who's now retired and living in the country, suffers a stroke and is taken to the local hospital, where his doctor, Ulrika Stenholm, tells him about an unsolved 25-year-old murder. Ulrika's father, a retired vicar, told her shortly before his recent death that he once took confession from someone who knew who had kidnapped and killed nine-year-old Yasmine Ermegan, the daughter of two Iranian immigrants. After recovering, Johansson-unofficially-investigates, with the help of his former partner, Jarnebring. The initial case was botched back in 1985; thanks to a law abolishing the statute of limitations, it can't be prosecuted now. Johansson demonstrates real brilliance in identifying the killer, but equally impressive is what he does with the knowledge. Persson (Free Falling, as if in a Dream) provides plenty of domestic details and lengthy asides, which lend interest but slow the narrative. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden). (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Swedish mysterian Persson (Linda, As in the Linda Murder, 2016, etc.) brings a memorable creation to a close in this pensive whodunit.Lars Martin Johansson, a CSI detective who can "see around corners," figures in other books by Persson, especially Free Falling, as If in a Dream (2014). Here, at the outset of a yarn whose very title tells the reader that things will not go well for the Swedish Sherlock, Johansson has been discovered slumped behind a steering wheel, the victim of a stroke. His doctors warn him that not only is his brain bleeding, but he's also got heart problems, dietary troubles, and other woes. "If you don't change your way of life, and I mean radically, then you'll die," one doctor warns. Casually, she then spins out a little tale from the cold-case file, one involving her late father, whoSweden being a small countryconnected at an oblique angle with the rape and murder of a young girl three decades earlier. Johansson cannot remember the details, and it bothers him: "He could live with the fact that he had forgotten the name of his only son's second wife," writes Persson, but not that he now cannot retrieve young Yasmine Ermegan from the encyclopedia of crime that had been his head. He reconstructs the case, filling in detail by detail with the aid of an odd assemblage of allies and newfangled DNA evidence. There aren't many red herrings: the real mystery in this well-paced though brooding story is what to do with what Johansson uncovers about the "perfectly ordinary, decent Swede" to whom all the evidence points. Indeed, the crux of the story lies in Johansson's wrestling with an appropriate solution to a crime that, incredibly, is fast slipping to the other side of the statute of limitations: does he let the bad guy get away, or does he take justice into his own hands? A knotty, sinuous story that leads to a hard-won resolutionand a decidedly conclusive end. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter 1 Karlbergsvägen 66 in Stockholm is the location of Günter's, the best hotdog kiosk in Sweden. Surrounded by sturdy stone buildings many storeys high, all constructed at the start of the last century. Solid brickwork, carefully laid, brick upon brick, with lime-mortar rendering, bow windows and old-fashioned leaded glass. Generous lawns in front of the properties and - at this time of year - leafy trees lining the street. When you enter the buildings there is usually red marble in both the lobbies and stairwells, friezes on the ceilings, ornate plasterwork, even dado panelling in places. The skirting boards and doors are made of oak, an area that gives a bourgeois, affluent impression.   Günter's is also located within the old city boundaries of the most beautiful capital in the world. Just a few hundred metres south of Karlberg Palace and the Karolinska University Hospital, and close to two of the major roads leading away from the north of the city centre.   The former head of the National Criminal Police, Lars Martin Johansson, really ought to have been at his summerhouse up in Roslagen today, but that morning he had been obliged to come into the city for a meeting with his bank, to conclude a deal about a patch of forest that he and his eldest brother were involved in.   Once that had been arranged, various other matters and errands of a miscellaneous and private nature, which for practical reasons he might as well sort out then and there, had, as usual, cropped up. The list of things to do had rapidly become very long, and by the time he was ready to return to his wife and summer tranquillity on Rådmansö it was almost eight o'clock in the evening and Johansson was hungry as a wolf.   Just a few hundred metres before he would be passing the old tollgate at Roslagstull on his drive north, hunger got the better of him. There was no way he was going to spend an hour driving when his stomach was already screaming at him. So he took a quick detour to the best hotdog kiosk in Sweden, for a well-spiced Yugoslavian bratwurst with salt-pickled Åland gherkins, sauerkraut and Dijon mustard. Or maybe a Zigeuner sausage with its aroma of freshly-ground pepper, paprika and onion? Or should he stay true to his Norrland roots and partake of a lightly-smoked elk sausage with Günter's homemade mash made from salad potatoes?   Absorbed in these pleasant considerations, he parked just a few metres from the kiosk, immediately behind one of the Stockholm Police's minibuses, and, like them, halfway onto the pavement, before getting out. Given that he had been retired for three years, this was not entirely legal, but it was eminently practical, and some of the habits he had developed during almost fifty years in the force were deeply engrained.   A warm and sunny day in early July, an evening that was as warm as the day had been - far from ideal weather for a hotdog, which presumably went some way to explaining why the queue ahead of him consisted of just four younger colleagues from the Stockholm rapid-response unit. Former colleagues, to be more precise, but they still recognised him. Nods, smiles, their commanding officer raising his right hand to his cropped head even though he had tucked his cap under his belt.   "How's it going, boys?" Johansson asked, having made his mind up as soon as he detected the heavenly smells drifting towards him. The elk sausage could wait until the autumn. Smokiness, well-balanced flavours and Norrlandic stoicism were all very well, but an evening such as this required something stronger. But not too strong, nothing from the southern Balkans. Paprika, onion, pepper and lightly-salted, coarse-ground pork would do very nicely indeed. In fact, considering the weather and his mood, he couldn't think of anything better.   "Nice and calm, so we thought we'd take the opportunity to refuel before the storm breaks," the officer replied. "You're welcome to go first, boss, if you like. We're not in a hurry."   "I'm a pensioner," Johansson said, for some reason. "And you've got to work. Who's got the energy to harass ne'er-do-wells on an empty stomach?"   "We're still making up our minds," the officer smiled and nodded. "So, please, go ahead."   "Well, in that case," Johansson said, and turned to the man behind the counter. "A Zigeuner with sauerkraut and French mustard. And something to drink. A bottle of water, with bubbles. The usual, you know."   He nodded encouragingly to the latest in the succession of Günter's associates. This one was a youngster called Rudy, an Austrian like Günter himself, and even though Günter had been dead for almost a decade, new staff were almost always recruited from his former homeland. Günter's best friend Sebastian, who had already taken over before Günter died, Udo, who had worked there for many years, and Katja, who was only there occasionally. There was another one whose name he had forgotten, and finally there was Rudy. Johansson knew them all, and they had known him over the course of several hundred hotdogs, and while Rudy was compiling his order he turned to make some agreeable small-talk with his younger colleagues. Or former colleagues, to be more precise.   "This year it will be forty-six years since I started as a beat-officer in Stockholm," Johansson said. Or is it forty-seven? he thought. Sod it, who cares?   "Back when you still carried sabres?" A broad grin from the youngest-looking one.   "Watch yourself, kid," Johansson said. Nice lad, he thought.   "And then you moved to surveillance," the younger officer's boss said, evidently well-schooled in Johansson's history.   "Ah, you know about that? Fifteen years," he added.   "Together with Jarnebring," another of them said.   "That's right. You remember the big beasts, then."   "Used to work there. Jarnis, Bosse, was my commanding officer. Best boss I've ever had," he added, for some reason.   "Would you like it in French bread, or would you like it on a tray, sir?" Rudy interrupted, holding up the freshly-cooked sausage.   "The usual," Johansson said. "Take a baguette, pull the innards out, then stuff it with sausage, sauerkraut and mustard." That can't be too hard to remember, can it? he thought.   "Where were we?" he asked, nodding to the colleague who had worked under his best friend. "Jarnebring, Bo Jarnebring."   "That's right," Johansson said, with unnecessary emphasis given that he was the one who had forgotten what they were talking about. "Jarnebring, yes. He's a pensioner as well now, retired at sixty-five, last year. Doing well, by the way. We meet up regularly and fabricate old memories to tell each other."   "Send him my best, sir, Patrik Åkesson, P-two. There were two Patriks in the group and I was last to arrive, so Jarnis called me that to avoid unnecessary confusion when we were out on jobs."   "Sounds like Jarnebring," Johansson said. He nodded, pocketed his change, and took the sausage and water he had ordered. Then he nodded again, mostly because he didn't have anything else to say.   "Take care of yourselves, lads," he added. "As I understand it, it's not like it was back in my day."   They all nodded back, suddenly serious, and their commanding officer once again signalled his respect by raising his hand to his close-cropped head.             In my day you'd have been fired for saluting without your cap on, Johansson thought as he managed, not without some difficulty, to squeeze into the driver's seat, put his drink into the cup-holder between the seats and move the sausage from his left hand to his right.   At that moment someone must have driven an ice-pick into the back of his neck. No rumbling forewarning of an ordinary headache, but a sharp, searing pain that tore through the back of his head. The sounds from the street blurred and became hard to hear, and then disappeared altogether. Darkness spread across his eyes, first the right one, then the left, as if someone had pulled a blind that had been hung up on the skew. His arm went numb and his fingers felt stiff and unresponsive. The sausage fell between the seats.   Then nothing but darkness and silence. Excerpted from The Dying Detective: A Mystery by Leif G. W. Persson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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