Another Time, Another Life
(The Story of a Crime 2)
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Stockholm
1975: Six young people take the entire staff of the West German embassy hostage, demanding that the Baader-Meinhof members being held as prisoners in West Germany be released immediately. The long siege ends with the deaths of two hostages and the wounding of several others, including the captors.
1989: When a Swedish civil servant is murdered, the two leading detectives on the case, Anna Holt and Bo Jarnebring, find their investigation hastily shelved by an incompetent and corrupt senior investigator.
1999. Lars Johansson, having just joined the Swedish Security Police, decides to tie up a few loose ends left behind by his predecessor: specifically, two files on Swedes who had allegedly collaborated on the 1975 takeover of the West German embassy, one of whom turned out to be the murder victim in 1989. Johansson reopens the investigation and, with help from detectives Jarnebring and Holt, follows the leads-right up to the doorstep of Sweden's newly minted minister of justice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The real-life 1975 siege of the West German embassy in Stockholm by six young terrorists drives Persson's ambitious second installment in his crime trilogy focused on Swedish politics (after 2010's Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End). In 1989, inspector Anna Holt and assistant detective Bo Jarnebring investigate a Swedish civil servant's murder, but their corrupt boss thwarts their efforts. In 2000, Lars Johansson, newly appointed to the Swedish Security Police (aka SePo), reopens both cases and uncovers a link. The author's straightforward journalistic approach makes the historical events seem remote and unapproachable, akin to a documentary-style police procedural. But the look at the fictional individual detectives and their fates through the years enriches the story. Good cops continue to be honest; some bad cops get their comeuppance, while other dishonest cops are promoted. In the end, politics trumps justice.
