Falling Freely as If in a Dream by Leif G.W. Persson

Falling Freely as If in a Dream Reviews

• 
  Dimitris Passas (TapTheLine)

  This is the third and final book in the legendary "Fall Of The Welfare State" trilogy, written by the Swedish top criminologist and crime fiction writer, Leif G.W. Persson. I should mention that it is not by any means necessary to have read the first two books ("Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End", "Another Time, Another Life") in order to understand what is going on as far as the plot is concerned, but readers who did will have a more thorough picture of the -many- characters in the novel.
  
  The main protagonist is once again Lars Martin Johansson who is now close to retirement and attempts to reopen a case that besets the Swedes for more than three decades and of course that is the murder of the Prime Minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, on Friday, 28 February 1986. The assassination took place on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, where a -still- unknown perpetrator shot Palme while he was walking home along with his wife, Lisbet, returning from a cinema night-out totally unattended, without any police protection or bodyguards. The police got in the crime scene almost ten minutes after the attack and what seemed at first to be an easy arrest in a matter of hours became one of the most discussed riddles in the European political scene.
  
  Johansson assembles a small, but effective, team of honest and dedicated police officers who
  who are charged with the task of re-examining the vast amount of evidence collected throughout decades of police work, in order to detect any possible mistakes or things that were overlooked by the officers who investigated the case in the past. This is a work of fiction, but most of the facts surrounding the murder are real and in some parts, it feels like watching a documentary which narrates the cold, hard evidence of this tragic assassination. Persson is an experienced author and succeeds in balancing a fictitious plotline with the sheer reality.
  
  As one may expect there are various theories about who indeed killed Olof Palme and in the more than 700 pages (!) of "Falling Freely As If In A Dream", we learn a lot of things about, for example,
  the original prime suspect, Christer Pettersson and the whole "solitary madman" argument, or the so-called "police track", thus the assumption that the Palme assassination was organized and executed by the people who were high on the Swedish police hierarchy. Persson offers some explanations created by his vivid writer's imagination that seems plausible to the reader and makes for an exciting, apart from educating, read.
  
  Readers who are familiar with Leif G.W. Persson body of work will be delighted by the fact that one of the main characters in this book is the mercurial and -many times- outrageous Evert Bäckström, who, as always, adds a comical touch to the dark and complicated story. This is the absolute must-read for everyone who claims to be a true fan of Scandinavian (crime) fiction and it will certainly also appeal to those who take an interest in the European political history.
  
  
  P.S. If you are interested in a true crime book about Olof Palme's assassination, I recommend "Blood in the Snow" by Jan Bondeson which offers an excellent account of the event and its consequences. The cinema fans will want to check out "Sista Kontraktet" ("The Last Contract"), directed by Kjell Sundvall and starring Mikael Persbrandt, a fictional story based on the actual event of the murder of the Swedish Prime Minister.
• 
  Leah

  Fiction is stranger than fact...
  
  Lars Martin Johansson, Chief of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, decides to have a final shot at solving the twenty-year old assassination of then Prime Minister of Sweden, Olof Palme. Pulling together a small team of his best detectives, he gets them to begin a review of the huge amount of paperwork relating to the investigation, trusting that fresh eyes might spot something previously overlooked. Meantime, Chief Inspector Bäckström, now sidelined to working in the Lost Property division, is determined to find a way to get the reward offered for solving the crime.
  
  This is a rather strange book in that the assassination of Olof Palme is, of course, a real event, which has never been properly solved. Although one man was convicted of the murder, he was later released on appeal. While many still think him guilty, there are about a zillion other theories too – from rogue police officers to Kurdish terrorists – and all, from what Persson suggests, based on the thinnest of evidence or none at all. So from the start it was hard to see exactly where we were going to end up in this book – either Persson would have to stick with the facts, leading to an untidy unresolved ending, or he would have to invent a solution. I thought he might be going to use the opportunity to put forward his own pet theory (I'm guessing every Swede has one) but the book didn't really give me that impression. Instead it read more like a kind of slow thriller and seemed to veer further from reality as it progressed. In fact, I found all the way through that I didn't know which bits were fact and which were fiction, which meant that by the end I couldn't really say I knew more about the real assassination than I did at the beginning (i.e., nothing). I suspect this would work much better for anyone who knows the ins and outs of the crime and investigation before they begin, but for me it all felt too confused and unclear. The more I read, the more unconvinced I became about the merit of using a real, unsolved case in this way, especially such a high profile and recent case.
  
  Putting the concept to one side, then, and looking at the book purely as a crime thriller worked a little better for me. Johansson and his team are well drawn and their interactions have a convincing feel. We get to see them in their off-duty lives too, which makes them feel well rounded. This is a team of professionals who on the whole respect each other and work well together. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Bäckström – obviously supposed to be the comic relief, he is an 'old-fashioned' sexist, racist, drunken, corrupt copper – oh dear! Yes, occasionally he has a funny line, but really he is so stereotyped and one-dimensional as to be completely unbelievable, and I tired very quickly of his foul-mouthed, offensive remarks. Maybe they were funnier in Swedish. The whole strand relating to him made very little sense as far as I could see, and I felt the book would have been better and tighter without him in it.
  
  The fictional investigation sees the detectives discussing many of the 'tracks' followed by the real investigators, plus, I assume, some made up stuff so that Persson could deliver his own version of events. While interesting, there is a good deal of repetition in these sections, not just of information, but often the same phrases being used time and again, all of which contributes to the book being seriously overlong. The translation is fine for the most part, but occasionally becomes clunky and a few times actually leaves the meaning somewhat unclear. Overall, the interest of the original case plus the good characterisation of the main team just about outweighed the annoying Bäckström and my mild irritation at not knowing where the line lay between fact and fiction. I'd guess that Persson fans will enjoy this but, although it works as a standalone, in hindsight perhaps it's not the best of his books to start with. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
  
  NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Random House Transworld.
  
  
  www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
• 
  Rebecca

  I signed up to goodreads today just so I could review this book, which I just finished yesterday.
  
  This is the third book of Perrson's The Story of a Crime trilogy, the titular crime being the 1986 assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister, Olaf Palme, which has never been solved. In this fictional treatment, the author proposes a solution that seems highly plausible, if thoroughly chilling. And if his fictional musings happen to come anywhere close to the truth, it's clear that there will never be an "official" closing of the case.
  
  I find myself tempted to ascribe some authority to the author's "musings" due to his c.v.(from the book jacket) Leif GW Persson has chronicled the political and social development of modern Swedish society in his award-winning novels for more than three decades. Persson has served as an advisor to the Swedish Ministry of Justice and is Sweden's most renowned psychological profiler. He is a professor at Sweden's National Police Board and is considered the country's foremost expert on crime.
  
  First of all, I would not recommend this book to anyone who has not read the first two books of the trilogy. Unless one has taken the whole journey from the first book to the last, I can't imagine how one could possibly appreciate the full depth and intricacy of the tapestry Persson has woven out of all the disparate and fascinating threads that surface throughout the course of the trilogy to the very final page of book three.
  
  The journey through all three books certainly requires a certain commitment - each volume runs to about 600 pages, more or less - and the writing style clearly doesn't appeal to everyone, judging by some of the reviews written for the two earlier books. Plus, you'll need to be willing to absorb a heady stream of observations touching on Swedish politics, history, the structure of Swedish police and security forces, immigration issues, racism, misogyny, and a thorough immersion into Swedish culture in general.
  
  However, as I closed the covers of this final book, sat back and pondered this long journey that Persson had brought me on, all I could think of is what an amazing, thoroughly edifying, delicious trip it has been.
• 
  Aggeliki

  Αστυνομικό έτσι για την αλλαγή. Που ωστόσο δεν με καθήλωσε. Εκτός από τις τελευταίες 50 σελίδες που η πλοκή ήταν κομματάκι πιο έντονη. Δεν το περίμενα για ένα βιβλίο με θέμα την εξιχνίαση του φόνου του Ούλοφ Πάλμε. Από τα θετικά, το γεγονός ότι ο συγγραφέας χειρίστηκε με σεβασμό πληροφορίες, παρέθεσε γεγονότα και πιθανά σενάρια της δολοφονίας. Απλή γραφή, σημερινοί διάλογοι, παρόλα αυτά έχω την αίσθηση πως όσα είχε να πει, μπορούσαν να συμπυκνωθούν και στις μισές σελίδες του τόμου ετούτου.
• 
  Fenia Vazaka

  Ένας εξαιρετικός τρόπος κλεισίματος της τριλογίας του Persson σχετικά με τη δολοφονία του Πάλμε!
  Δεν αφήνει κανένα κενό στην ιστορία, καλύπτει όσα ερωτήματα έμειναν ανοιχτά από τα προηγούμενα δύο βιβλία, εμβαθύνει περισσότερο στους χαρακτήρες και η λύση με τη Θεία Δίκη έρχονται σαν από μηχανής θεός!
  Για άλλη μία φορά το ζητούμενο δεν είναι να βρούμε τον ένοχο και να τον φέρουμε ενώπιον του νόμου για την καταδίκη του. Η τιμωρία έρχεται εσωτερικά, κρυφά και μόνο για τους λίγους που γνωρίζουν.
  Ο Γιούχανσον, ο "άνθρωπος που βλέπει πίσω από τις γωνίες" παραμένει από τους πιο αγαπητούς πρωταγωνιστές-επιθεωρητές και ενορχηστρώνει αρμονικά την έρευνα.
  Επίσης, έρχεται στο φως ο ρόλος που έπαιξε στην όλη ιστορία και η σιχαμερή προσωπικότητα του Κλας Βαλτίν, οπότε ο αναγνώστης απολαμβάνει ιδιαίτερα την κατάληξή του.
  Ο ήρωας που λατρεύεις να μισείς θα γίνει ο Έβερτ Μπέκστρεμ! Καταφέρνει να ζει σε ένα παράλληλο σύμπαν, να κυνηγάει τα δικά του φαντάσματα, να καταλήγει στα δικά του αλλοπρόσαλλα συμπεράσματα, να εκνευρίζει τους πάντες και να βγάζει πολύ γέλιο με τα παθήματά του!
• 
  Ελένη Αθανασίου

  Η τέλεια αστυνομική τριλογία. Υπόθεση, δομή, λογοτεχνική γλώσσα, σασπένς, ανάπτυξη χαρακτήρων, όλα υποδειγματικά καμωμένα!
• 
  John Brooke

  Leif GW Persson is (in my humble opinion) the best Swedish crime writer. Which is to say: the one I most admire and enjoy. Funny in both a satirical and whimsical manner. Encyclopedic as to the police-political nexus. Audacious in his ploddingly compelling structuring of an almost 600-page story. And starkly poetic just sometimes, but enough.
  
  I put ‘funny’ at the head of my list. Funny is a literary quality I hold in high esteem, the more so when a story concerns the darker aspects of life and society. Persson is, hands down, the funniest Swedish crime writer. (I’m tempted to write ‘the only funny Swedish crime writer’.)
  
  Free falling as if in a dream is the third in a massive trilogy constellated around the assassination of Olaf Palme in 1986, an “unsolved” crime that rivals the Kennedy assassination for cultural obsession (and which apparently has amassed more man-hours and paper work). In the summer of 2007 high-ranking cop Lars Martin Johanssen is nearing the end of a successful career. The time-frame coincides with the 20-year statute of limitations on any official investigation into the Palme killing. Johanssen does not accept the police-establishment-sanctioned Christer Pettersson theory; he cannot deal with the thought that within a few months the real killer might be beyond legal touch. So he gathers three top investigators and sends them back into the huge mass of collected information and theory for one more try at bringing a satisfactory resolution.
  
  The first part of the story focuses on debunking the accepted theory, which says that a small-time criminal shot Palme and his wife in the street on a brazen impulse and fled in a certain direction. This is taken from reality: Christer Pettersson was eventually picked up, tried and convicted, then freed on appeal. He died from head injuries after a "bad fall" after reporting he was being harassed by the police - after he had apparently contacted Palme's son saying he had something he wanted to say. But the meeting never occurred. Which makes a new investigation difficult.
  
  And it’s not just Petterson. Many of the witnesses and possible players in the assassination are dead twenty years after the fact. Much of the challenge in this book is following the collecting and collating of miniscule scarps of information that creates the reasoning that eventually leaves the Pettersson theory behind, and heads into much more sinister territory.
  
  As the way toward a better solution slowly opens, Persson brings in Evert Backstrom, another veteran police officer and a mainstay in Persson’s fictional oeuvre. (Backstrom also figures in the first two books of this trilogy. And there are two other novels featuring Backstrom, which I have not read.) This is a discredited cop and an awful man – and a very funny character, both stubbornly stupid and cunningly smart. He is comic relief, and also pointed satire viz. blinkered police work. Backstrom conducts his own parallel investigation and comes close to the same results as the Johanssen team.
  
  There are a few more characters that are part of the entire trilogy. The most important is the forever unnamed ‘special advisor’ – the obese, gourmand and erudite eminence grise behind the elected powers running Swedish democracy. Lars Martin Johanssen, an imposing, willful man in his own right, is reduced in his presence – simultaneously fascinated and worried by ‘Sweden’s own Cardinal Richelieu.’
  
  The 3 cops working on the case for Johanssen are fully drawn and distinctly interesting: Anna Holt. Lisa Mattei. Jan Lewan.
  
  Of course I suggest reading Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s Cold and Another Time, Another Life before you tackle Free falling as if in a dream. That’s about a thousand more pages. You’ll learn lots – about contemporary Sweden, sure; even more about paranoid left-vs-right political tensions in capitalist culture. (The 2nd book builds links to the Kennedy killing.)
  
  Caveat: Do not approach these books as ‘thrillers’ – think of them as sprawling ‘comedies of error’ dressed in police mystery clothes.
  
  If the first two books in the trilogy conclude with frustrating loose ends, this book wraps it all up in a fairly satisfactory way. Never totally satisfactory – that is what makes it ‘social realism’. But great fiction nonetheless.
  
  5 stars. You have to read carefully and patiently. But very much worth the effort.
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Bonnie

  I really didn't read this in Swedish; the Goodreads app wouldn't record the translated version. The title is Free Falling, As If In A Dream and is written by Leif GW Persson. Persson has chronicled the political and social development of modern Swedish society in his award winning novels for thirty years. He is Sweden's most renowned psychological profiler and a professor at the National Police Board and the foremost expert on crime.
  
  This novel represents the final volume in the crime trilogy centered on the assassination of Olaf Palme in 1986. It's August 2007, and Lars Martin Johansson, Chief of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Sweden, opens the dusty files on the unsolved murder of the Prime minister, hoping to finally solve the case before his retirement. He forms a new group of close, trustworthy detectives who descend to the basement to pour through literally mountains of paperwork and pursue new leads. The novel is 600 pages of minutely detailed police procedural involving witnesses at the crime scene and interviews of them and anyone close to them.
  
  Olaf Palme had intended to spend a quiet night at home with his wife, but, apparently, decided at the last moment to attend a movie. It was while they were leaving the theater that a man described as six-feet tall, with short dark hair, wearing a half-link dark coat, pulled a pistol from his pocket and fired shots at Olaf and his wife. He killed the Prime Minister instantly and wounded his wife.
  
  The relationship between Johansson and his staff is one of the highlights of the novel. Descriptions are given of each of their personal lives. In one scene Johansson is talking with his special advisor who asks: "What should we expect next time? The old orangutan from the Rue de Morgue? Or perhaps the swamp adder in Conan Doyle's story about the speckled band?" Persson has a sense of humor.
  
  I found the street names absolutely fascinating even though unpronounceable: Kungsgatan, Sveavagen, Malmskillnadsgatan, Dobelnsgatan. Yes, my spell check has red-lined my screen!
  
  Another detail of Swedish life is an account of food consumed. When the special advisor invites Johansson for a meal, the amount of food consumed is astronomical: the appetizers were Beluga caviar, duck liver, and quail eggs followed by consommé of lobster, shredded onions and petite pois, clams, with tomato, asparagus, grilled king crab with veal sausage, grated potatoes and spicy sauce. Next came filet of brill with globe artichoke and etouffee of crayfish tail, venison chanterelles, grilled in butter, roasted cauliflower, cheese soufflé, brie, truffles with apple jelly, cream cheese with plums, and chocolate terrine. After the meal the two played pool and then had a small supper of herring, crayfish, grilled sausages, small beef patties topped with fried eggs.
  
  This is one of the most interesting books I have ever read. The information contained is astonishing; it could be the definitive description of Swedish life.
• 
  Greg

  The final instalment of Leif G.W. Persson's Story of a Crime series feels like a bit of a letdown.
  
  Now approaching retirement as head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Las Martin Johansson decides to take one last crack at solving the murder of Swedish PM Olof Palme, the subject of the first book in the series, Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End.
  
  Johannson assembles a team of detectives and instructs them to comb through twenty years of disorganised archives and identify the killer. To avoid getting noses out of joint, he does this under the cover of getting the archives collated and re-organised into a more searchable form.
  
  Detectives Holt, Lewin and Mattei reluctantly get started on this massive task. Meanwhile the corrupt Inspector Backstrom gets wind of this and launches an extra-curricular investigation of his own, of an entirely different nature. Inevitably, these two investigations eventually converge on one figure.
  
  My concern with this novel is that it all just seemed to easy for these investigators. What they find in a relatively short time does not seem nearly challenging enough or difficult enough to explain why a vast investigative team could not find this out over twenty years. Persson's ending needed to be more arcane and more baffling than it is. I was also not a fan of the frequent plot points that start up and then are quickly killed off, and the amount that is left unexplained after reading thousands of pages of this story. I especially found the key plot point of Waltin's university club puerile and distasteful; it didn't need to be as crass as Persson decides to make it.
  
  I enjoyed the paranoia, bafflement and tension of Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End, and I wish now that I had left it there.
• 
  Palmreader

  This trilogy is an amazing work of fiction. That there is a mystery involved is merely icing on the cake. The writing is taut and worthy of any literary fiction. The characters are evolved and dialogue is interesting, well thought out and entirely believable.
  Trying to remember that this is not "true crime" is difficult because it is all so plausible. I am in awe of the translator, who must have felt that they were actually writing a new book.
  My one caveat is that this is not an easy read. It requires you to concentrate and remember people and events from three books.
  The threads running through the three stories are kept lightly in hand. My one disappointment was that Lars Martin's friend Jarneburg is not so noticeable in this last book.
  If you like the genre of Scandi crime fiction. If you like police procedurals. If you like gripping storylines. This is a series you really should read.
  I have to say that these books take police procedural to a whole new level. Amazing detail You feel like you are right there, turning the boxes of evidence out and rifling through pages of testimony. It is quite a treat.
  
• 
  Hans Brienesse

  This is a book that to do justice to it really needs to be read in large chunks not small bites. I really loved this book with it's plausible plot line but as another reviewer has stated there are a lot of characters to keep track of. I found myself a bit restricted for time and attempted to read a bit each day which necessitated rereading small passages to fill in what I had missed or forgotten. Although this method got me through the book I found the best understanding and enjoyment was gained near the end when I just made an effort to read until I had finished it. The book is the third in the Palme series and gives a good idea on how things could have happened in an event which has been difficult for the Swedish police to unravel or understand. Although a work of fiction it could just as easily have been a narrative of police findings. This has gone to my list of series to re read in it's entirety. Try it, you will like it.
• 
  Helen

  Final volume in a trilogy. (It would probably be better to read them closer together than I have as I couldn't remember all the details from the earlier books which are relevant!) This one combines truth and, presumably, fiction, as it's based on a re-examination of the Palme murder, which is still unsolved. The dreadful Evert Backstrom reappears, although he is still professionally sidelined (and he does actually get close to the truth). The murder is solved in the novel but in a way which ensures that the secret will never be told - so, how close to the truth is it?
  Lots of detail of Swedish life here too, and some linguistic quirks in translation which sound a little odd in English but are probably a fair representation of certain Swedish expressions.
• 
  Richard

  Excellent conclusion to the Fall of the Welfare State trilogy. While this book can stand on its own, you will want to read these in order because they do build on each other. Plus, you really learn what happened in the first volume.
  
  The new plot here is the death of a retired Swedish police officer off the coast of Spain. As with the previous novels, all threads tie back to the murder of Olaf Palme on the streets of Stockholm. Plenty of amusing writing and dialogue, and the oafish Backstrom pushes the plot along nicely in spite of his incompetence.
  
  All told these are excellent books and well worth your valuable reading time.
• 
  Markus Lustig

  Vähiten huono tähän mennessä luetuista Perssoneista. En siltikään ole fani. Kirja kertoo Olof Palmen murhasta, sen tutkinnasta ja on tyyliltään kovin dokumentaarinen. En välillä ollut varma luinko dekkaria vaiko tietokirjaa. Lopulta ei tutkitakaan Palmen murhaa ja itse ehkä (?) kirjan päätapausta ihmetellään viimeiset pari sataa sivua. Kirjan olisi siis voinut oikeastaan typistää siihen ja unohtaa koko Palmen. Palmen murha on edelleen ratkomatta (vaikka Ruotsissa toisin väitetään), eikä tämä hieman hämmentävä teos tuonut siihen mitään valoa.
• 
  Mary Smith

  the final volume of a trilogy concerning the unsolved assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister. The assassination is true; Persson is considered one Sweden's top criminologists/crime writers. But this is a novel nonetheless.
  It was somewhat slow going for quite a while I have to admit. But then engages.
  
• 
  Helena Flo

  I was completely taken in by this story. Free Falling is is a fictionalized account of the real assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme. The translation from Swedish was excellent and the cast of characters were fascinating. My first Leif Persson, but will have to find more.
  
  I'm very curious how much of this story is speculative and how much is based on real people and events.
• 
  Renata Prokop

  Didn't enjoy it much as it was known from the start who dunnit. Way too many unnecessary conversations described in detail, side stories and people's thoughts. The book could have been much shorter, more to the point and would have been much more enjoyable
• 
  Timo Tiilikainen

  Fun to read. A police procedural. Lot of strange characters among the suspects and the police. Sometimes I lost the thread with so many protagonists and checked back . I was surprised by the ending but maybe It had to be that way.
• 
  Philip

  Är som att läsa en ovanligt träig dialog av Platon, men istället för att prata om idévärlden är det en illa förklädd GW som lägger ut teorier om Palmemordet medan de andra ropar ”du är så vis Sokrates!”
• 
  Edith

  4 and 1/2 stars.
• 
  Helena Frisk

  Sådär...