This book is finally a classical detective story where all side plots are nicely combined in the end and they all support the murder mystery. At the end all pieces are in their correct places. Such books are much nicer to read than the modern detectives where many clues are just forgotten and the book has a crime theme merged with a snapshot of a detective’s personal life worries.
I would be unfair to reveal the good plot of this excellent detective novel. It suffices to say that one James Bond is entitled you only live twice and there the first death is faked, and to point out that, as recent exhumations have amply demonstrated, in a major catastrophe investigation it is easy to make minor errors in the protocol. But reading the book I did not guess all of the plot.
The antihero of the book, detective Evert Bäckstöm, is still as unlikable as before, but showing some human traits: he is actually reasonably nice towards a child, though only because the boy scout adores the best Swedish police detective and happily performs for him small services even if is too young to pick up a bottle of vodka. The fat, short, lazy, rich and arrogant Bäckström is a negative image of his creator in taking a day nap after a wet lunch and who knows in what other ways. Maybe in the next book Bäckström is already on pension and decides to write a novel of his best solved cases, like Tolkien’s Bilbo. Clearly, his narrator is too critical, even cynical. Probably Bäckström is not that bad. After all, he is a great detective. In the book he conquers the heart of his most stubborn opponent, a policewoman from his team. Or was she just trying to lure Bäcksöm into the capital crime of buying sex? Selling it is fully legal in Sweden.
There are many boy scouts in this story. Later in life these boy scouts address their emails to Brother this and that. I once received such an email. I had to reply that I am no Mason. Once I received a secret handshake, but the person soon noticed that I did not know the grips. Is there a connection between boy scouts and Masons? Japanese once though there was. They believed that Freemasons were a subversive secret society. We know that they are not, or more precisely, that the Brotherhood had two forms. One was for the Great Britain and the USA, where Masons had to believe in a higher Spirit and not to weave subversive plots, and the other, the Grand Orient, was for France, Italy, Spain, Russia, even Sweden in the end of 1700, and for all other countries, Turkey and Austria-Hungary and all colonies and so on. This other Freemasonry, especially Memphis and Mizraim, opposed all absolute kings and the Pope, accepted atheists and did not have any rule for not speaking or doing politics. They planned revolutions, socialistic and otherwise. Later, in Italy, they still had Gelly’s P2 in 1980ies, and so it was all the time. It is not a contradiction. Forbidden from visiting an irregular lodge, I wonder why such a rule.
In Persson’s book Bäckström is not part of these good brother networks. He has his own connections both to upper echelons and to criminal elements, but he also has support in the police, even in the highest level of the security police. He cannot be that bad as two Finns, his technician Niemi and his boss Toivanen, accept him. But the good brother network seems to be something Persson dislikes. They are sending incompetent prosecutors to bother the real cops. Maybe this has something to do with Persson’s experiences as a whistle blower, but it is also likely to be true. Things are rotten on the top as well as on the bottom. Finally the justice is reached by bypassing the system. Bäckström follows one principle that I many times heard and always disliked: never tell your superiors correctly what you are doing. But in a book like this, the antihero of course should do just that.
It is a good book. Maybe it is less interesting than Persson’s attempt to solve the Palme murder, but it is a very nice Sherlock Holmes story with some small connections to the reality. I did not get the part of Putin in this book, but never mind.