Winner of the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel 2014 In the middle of an unusually hot summer, a young woman studying at the Swedish Police Academy is brutally murdered. Deeply unwillingly, Police Inspector Evert Bäckström is drafted in to head up the investigation. It is a questionable choice of detective for such a high profile case. Bäckström is egotistical, vain and utterly prejudiced against everything, a man with no discernable sense of duty, who thinks everyone with the exception of himself is an imbecile and really has only warm feelings towards his pet goldfish and the nearest bottle of liquor. He also thinks he is God's gift to modern policing. If they are to solve the case, his long suffering team must work around him, following the scant few leads which remain after Bäckström's intransigence has let the trail go cold.