Linda, As in the Linda Murder A Backstrom Novel

The irascible, obdurate, and very thirsty Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström of the National Murder Squad returns in a new novel from the reigning master of Scandinavian fiction.

It’s the dead of summer in the sleepy town of Växjö when twenty-year-old police cadet Linda Wallin is found lying facedown in her mother’s apartment, brutally murdered and raped. With no clear motive or suspect in sight, a series of bureaucratic mix-ups causes the National Crime Unit to send Bäckström and his team into the countryside to solve the case. The ever-irritable Bäckström leaves his beloved goldfish behind, checks into a local hotel, and begins to reconstruct the night of Linda’s murder. But with more than a few bottles in tow, and a constantly growling stomach to look after, things don’t go so well, and Bäckström has to rely on the help of his colleagues to solve the crime—no matter how angry that makes him.

Leif GW Persson has chronicled the political and social development of modern Swedish society in his award-winning novels for more than three decades. He has served as an adviser to the Swedish ministry of justice and is Sweden’s most renowned psychological profiler. A professor at the Swedish National Police Board, he is considered the country’s foremost expert on crime.