"Larsson is one of the best current practitioners of Scandinavian crime fiction" Financial Times
"A masterful storyteller . . . An astute social commentator" Sunday Express
Winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year 2021 (Swedish Crime Writers' Academy)
Winner of the Storytel Award for Best Suspense Novel 2021
Winner of the Adlibris Award for Best Suspense Novel 2021
Forensic pathologist Lars Pohjanen has only a few weeks to live when he asks Rebecka Martinsson to investigate a murder that has long since passed the statute of limitations. A body found in a freezer at the home of the deceased alcoholic, Henry Pekkari, has been identified as a man who disappeared without a trace in 1962: the father of Swedish Olympic boxing champion Börje Ström. Rebecka wants nothing to do with a fifty-year-old case - she has enough to worry about. But how can she ignore a dying man's wish?
When the post-mortem confirms that Pekkari, too, was murdered, Rebecka has a red-hot investigation on her hands. But what does it have to do with the body kept in his freezer for decades?
Meanwhile, the city of Kiruna is being torn down and moved a few kilometres east, to make way for the mine that has been devouring the city from below. With the city in flux, the tentacles of organized crime are slowly taking over . . .
Fragile yet fierce Rebecka Martinsson returns in a spellbinding addition to the Arctic Murders series, now a Walter Presents drama for television.
Translated from the Swedish by Frank Perry
What could Henry Pekkari's murder have to do with the body of a man that was kept in his freezer for decades?
As Rebecka and the team with the Kiruna police start digging into the case, they are led to the Lingonberry King - a man, now in his nineties, who was once the region's organized crime leader. He is now surrounded by Russian-speaking muscle-men and a house that is protected like a fortress. The whole city of Kiruna is being torn down and moved a few kilometers east to give room to the mine that has been eating up the city from underneath. In the wake of the city move, the tentacles of organized crime are slowly taking over the city...
Former boxer Börje Ström may have been searching for the truth about his father, but in the process, he is faced with the truth about himself, his life, and the choices he has made in order to become heavyweight champion of the world. In flashbacks, we follow his life as a young man coming of age. In the present tense, Börje Ström and Ragnhild Pekkari, two tough pensioners scarred by a hard life, find one another. A beautiful and unexpected love story unfolds and when the truth of the dead boxer in the freezer, the Lingonberry King and the violence on the Pekkari island homestead finally comes to light, it is transformative for the gray-haired couple - as well as for Rebecka Martinsson, who will finally be given the key to the mysteries of her own mother's childhood.
The sixth and final book in Åsa Larsson's beloved crime series brings the story of fragile yet fierce heroine Rebecka Martinsson to a spellbinding end. The Sins of Our Fathers was named Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year by the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy.
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