Backstroem
3 total works
DS Evert Bäckström is in charge of a rare kind of case. Finding a suspect for the murder of Thomas Eriksson – gangster lawyer and renowned defender of the guilty – isn’t difficult, but narrowing down the long list of people who wanted him dead is almost impossible. Certainly the only thing the detective is mourning is his obligation to process the paperwork.
Fortunately, Bäckström has spent his years cultivating a group of questionable acquaintances. His colleagues don’t know that he only closes his cases with the help of these friends. Nor that Bäckström owes them a few favours. But this time they’re all in for a surprise because even the dirtiest cop couldn’t have predicted where this trail would lead or how far from comfortable Bäckström might be at its end.
In this second installment of Persson’s trilogy of police procedurals featuring the "small, fat and primitive" Evert Bäckström, the grand master’s most appallingly repulsive (and funniest) character is finally given his fifteen minutes of fame by way of his patented combination of laziness, luck, and an unbelievable sense of timing.
A seemingly ordinary murder puzzles Bäckström, who is struggling with strict orders from his doctor to lead a healthier life. His gut feeling proves him right: within days, his team has another murder linked to the first on their hands, and reports of alleged ties to a Securicor heist gone out of control, killing two. The nation needs a hero, and the newly appointed head of the Västerort police force Anna Holt needs somebody to kill the dragon for her. Who better to heed to the task than Evert Bäckström: self-sufficient, ostentatious, devoid of moral, Hawaii shirt-clad, and, latterly, armed?
Winner of the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel 2014
In the middle of an unusually hot Swedish summer, a young woman studying at the Vaxjo Police Academy is brutally murdered. Police Inspector Evert Bäckström is unwillingly drafted in from Stockholm to head up the investigation.
Egotistical, vain and utterly prejudiced against everything, Bäckström is a man who has no sense of duty or responsibilty, thinks everyone with the exception of himself is an imbecile and is only really capable of warm feelings towards his pet goldfish and the nearest bottle of liquor. If they are to solve the case, his long suffering team must work around him, following the scant few leads which remain after Bäckström's intransigence has let the trail go cold.
Blackly comic, thrillingly compelling and utterly real, Linda, As in the Linda Murder is the novel which introduces the reader to the modern masterpiece that is Evert Bäckström, a man described by his creator as 'short, fat and primitive'. He is, without doubt, the real deal when it comes to modern policing.