The Man who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson’s Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin (2020) is about the book that author Stieg Larsson was writing when he died.
Stieg Larsson is the Swedish author of crime and thriller books such as The Millennium Trilogy—The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo(2005), The Girl who Played with Fire(2006), and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest(2007). They were all published posthumously. He died in 2004 at the age of 50.
The year is 2008 and Larsson’s works have been archived. But journalist Jan Stocklassa is given exclusive access to his papers—including the last book that he was writing.
Larsson was working on a true crime, intent on discovering who assassinated the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, on 28 February 1986 on a Stockholm street, shot in the back at point-blank range. Yet, the identity of the killer remains elusive.
Stocklassa takes Larsson’s clues and pieces them together to write a picture of the events leading up to the assassination, who was at the scene, and a possible solution. In a way, this is the joint effort of a dead writer and a dogged journalist—it is creative non-fiction.
There were a handful of witnesses at the time, but the police investigation led nowhere. Stocklassa starts with the day of the assassination, when 31-year-old Larsson was working as a graphic designer and illustrator for the Swedish TT news agency. The investigation turns to the prime minister, his politics, and his opposition. Larsson was given the task of mapping the area around the Grand Cinema and the murder site—Olof Palme and his wife, without bodyguards, had been to the cinema and were walking home. So Larsson had been involved and interested in this crime from the very beginning, 18 years before his novel-in-progress.
Stocklassa then moves to the police investigation, getting off to a bad start, before taking a deeper dive into Larsson’s archives of newspaper clippings, emails, maps, letters, interviews, and notes. Larsson’s and Stocklassa’s clues lead to different parts of the world. Stocklassa follows-up by interviewing a cast of people to slowly—very slowly—formulate a fresh picture of the murder.
This account is interesting throughout. It places Steig Larsson and his detailed thoughts of the assassination in direct collaboration with Stocklassa’s investigative journalism, making this compelling and fascinating reading, particulary for lovers of true crime thrillers. The evidence is easily understood, and shows a clear line of thought to a final potential solution, years in the making.
MARTINA NICOLLS
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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