The Swedish detective story is not as miraculous as before, however, the more or less cold murder mysteries of reality are a hot topic. “Who murdered the school?” asks Jesper Rönndahl in a heartbreaking satire series on SVT. And law professor Hans-Gunnar Axberger has in a book addressed the “Prime Minister’s assassination” with a result that few crime series can match.
Axberger shows brilliantly and mercilessly how the Swedish political system breaks down in the face of the incredible fact that the country’s prime minister has been assassinated. And how the Social Democratic Party grows together with the state apparatus in this time of trial.
No matter how tired you are of hearing about the Palme murder, and how little you can even bear the thought of reading another letter about the unprecedented investigation – read this book. Even if you get to learn very boring things about Sweden.
Largely: After the total confusion during the night of the murder, a county police chief arrives in the ski clothes of that time. In Borlänge, he turned the car on his way to Sälen and Vasaloppet and pinched the murder investigation. A man who, according to Axberger, “sets out to investigate murder for the first time in his life”.
County Police Chief Hans Holmér drives over the prosecutors and everyone with experience and joins forces with the Swedish trix of the 1970s and 1980s, Ebbe Carlsson. An almost unreal person who dupes people where he pulls up and puts everything to an end. In this situation, he and Hans Holmér are best friends. Holmér “Chinese” at Ebbe in Tantolunden and to the extent that they do not meet at breakfast, they call each other every day at seven in the morning.
No matter how tired you are of hearing about the Palme Murder – read this book.
The Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson and the Minister of Justice Anna-Greta Leijon ally themselves via the mill and master fixer Ebbe Carlsson with Hans Holmér, who gets his hands free and everything he points to. For example, a stylish room with furnishings, equipment and security protection that other police officers can only dream of – to dig themselves and the entire murder investigation into the PKK trail. Totally stillborn. Which more experienced people could have informed them about from the beginning.
It’s pure Jönsson league we read about. Miners who, on behalf of the disastrous Holmér, do just about anything. For example, banned eavesdropping equipment is smuggled in and goes to customs in Helsingborg.
Hans-Gunnar Axberger, general secretary of the inquiry that examined the Palme Inquiry in the 90s, and with a pencil sharp as a razor blade, cracks open the ugly seams that were trampled together between the government and the judiciary. Ebbe Carlsson had many falls. Anna-Greta Leijon, who could envision a brilliant career, possible successor, party leader and prime minister, did not have much left to pick up when it was all over. Carl Lidbom, who was not a fool, also went there on Ebbe.
Few come out of this splendor scandal. Possibly the public prosecutor Magnus Sjöberg.
Ebbe Carlsson was one diligent courtier of journalists. One day he called and wanted to meet me at an address that turned out to be his home. It was the mid-70s and I had written something in Aftonbladet about his then boss, Minister of Justice Lennart Geijer. The press secretary wanted to correct what he considered unfavorable about Geijer, with the help of coffee and gingerbread. I was a little surprised by the increase.
Then I had him every other day on my couch at work when I was the editor of the literary magazine BLM, Bonnier’s literary magazine, in the early 90’s. Ebbe was then a publisher and kept a few floors up in the house on Sveavägen.
He had many ideas, you have to give him that. And got to realize them. Fatal enough.
Read more chronicles and other texts by Maria Schottenius