The Dying Detective (2010) by Leif Persson
GoodReads meta-data is 548 pages, rated 3.96 by 1,923 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
Verdict: Superb.
While recovering from a heart attack, retired head of the National Crime Command in Sweden, one Lars Johanssen takes an interest in a cold case. It is a tired cliché brought to life by a master story teller. Lars spends most of the pages lying on the sofa at home as he recruits the home help, his brother’s factotum, his wife (and her brother), and another retired curmudgeon to scratch the itch.
Whenever his officers used complain at the impossible missions he assigned them, he always said, ‘Make the most of what you have.’ Now his physiotherapist says exactly that to him as he comes to terms with his new limitations, a dead right arm, poor coordination, recurrent headaches, and dizzy episodes. He didn’t realise how irritating and annoying that remark was until someone else said it to him!
His wife is a bank director and she can ferret out financial information from rabbit holes and her brother is a retired tax accountant who understands it. Curmudgeon has access to the police warehouse where the paper files from the case are stored through a nephew in uniform. (Good thing, too, that the paper is there because a computer disk crack destroyed the digital files, which to cut costs were not backed-up.) The home help is whip smart, and the factotum is a body builder who learned to survive the hard way. As Lars says, it is one of the best investigative teams he ever had, apart from the lack of badges and uniforms.
While the statute of limitations has expired on the cold case, surely the perpetrator did not stop at one. But who is he? Yes, it had to be a he. (Figure it out.)
It all turns on a fibre that should not have been there. But the puzzle has many pieces.
Along the way, Lars learns to accept his frailty and comes to like the home help despite the tattoos and studs, and swallows his ingrained hatred of Russians (the body builder). He still has time and room to grow, if reluctantly. Pia, his wife, quietly observes his changes.
I got to know and like Lars in Death of Pilgrim, reviewed elsewhere on this blog, and went looking for other books featuring his investigations. Solid gold, this one. (Regrettably I did not like the second one I read, Falling Freely, as If in a Dream (2007), finding it disjointed and indulgent.)
A couple of niggles. I cannot quite see how the original investigation did not turn up the nephew-in-law. I also wondered early on why the father’s paramour from the hospital was not interrogated either in the original investigation or much sooner by Lars. See, I was paying attention.