The Dying Detective
A Mystery
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
***WINNER OF THE CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION'S INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2017***
***WINNER OF THE DANISH ACADEMY OF CRIME WRITERS' PALLE ROSENKRANTZ PRIZE (Best Crime Novel 2012)***
***WINNER OF THE FINNISH ACADEMY OF CRIME WRITERS' AWARD (Best Crime Novel 2012)***
***WINNER OF THE GLASS KEY (Best Scandinavian Crime Novel 2011)***
***WINNER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY OF CRIME WRITERS' AWARD (Best Crime Novel of the Year 2010)***
LARS MARTIN JOHANSSON is a living legend. Cunning and perceptive, always one step ahead, he was known in the National Criminal Police as “the man who could see around corners.” But now Johansson is retired, living in the country, his police days behind him.
Or so he thinks.
After suffering a stroke, Johansson finds himself in the hospital. Tests show heart problems as well. And the only thing that can save him from despair is his doctor’s mention of an unsolved murder case from years before. The victim: an innocent nine-year-old girl.
Johansson is determined to solve the case, no matter his condition. With the help of his assistant, Matilda, an amateur detective, and Max, an orphan with a personal stake in the case, he launches an informal investigation from his hospital bed. Racing against time, he uncovers a web of connections that links sex tourism to a dead opera singer and a self-made millionaire. And as Johansson draws closer to solving the crime, he finds that he will have to confront not just a mystery but his own mortality as well.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Persson's cleverly plotted police procedural, Lars Martin Johansson, a celebrated Stockholm investigator who's now retired and living in the country, suffers a stroke and is taken to the local hospital, where his doctor, Ulrika Stenholm, tells him about an unsolved 25-year-old murder. Ulrika's father, a retired vicar, told her shortly before his recent death that he once took confession from someone who knew who had kidnapped and killed nine-year-old Yasmine Ermegan, the daughter of two Iranian immigrants. After recovering, Johansson unofficially investigates, with the help of his former partner, Jarnebring. The initial case was botched back in 1985; thanks to a law abolishing the statute of limitations, it can't be prosecuted now. Johansson demonstrates real brilliance in identifying the killer, but equally impressive is what he does with the knowledge. Persson (Free Falling, as if in a Dream) provides plenty of domestic details and lengthy asides, which lend interest but slow the narrative.
