Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

Author: Leif G.W. Persson
Stars: 5
Review by: Little Red Hen
Destination: Stockholm, Sweden

If you shop at IKEA, the Swedish company, you have a small pencil, a pad of paper and a tape measure to take notes and help you keep track of things. This book needs similar tools.

The title,  "I have lived my life caught between the longing of summer and the cold of winter." is the first sentence of text in a letter recovered from John P. Krassner, who took his life by jumping from a student dormitory s window, his body followed by his other boot with a hollow heel, in the heel a key to the safe-deposit box in the US. In a hand-written text,  An honest Swedish Cop.Police Superintendent Lars M. Johansson with his Stockholm address.

Lars Martin Johansson, Police Superintendent of National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, a solitary man, divorced, and in the process of changing jobs gradually and thoughtfully follows his instinct that something doesn't add up.

Across the ocean he goes to Langley, VA and a seminar and a side trip to Albany, NY to visit Sarah J. Weissman, who identifies herself as a freelance writer and Krassner s old girl friend.

 Johnansson learns about Krassner as the American nephew of John Fionn Buchanan and his agent from the cold war,  Pilgrim Prime Minister of Sweden.

In a New Jersey tie, Buchanan was born in Newark, NJ . He served in Stockholm for four years as appointed assistant military attaché at the American embassy in Stockholm. He left the military and returned to academic life as a professor in contemporary European history at SUNY Albany. But it was his will leaving all of the collected property, including the intellectual property to John P.Krassner that has Johnansson convinced something just isn t right.

The connection between the Buchanan Papers, the murder by the Swedish secret police operative of John Fionn Buchanan, aka Raven, and the murder of the Swedish Prime Minister is one of those elements.
Like the nesting Russian dolls, there are many characters driven by a mixture of neuroses, psychoses, alcoholism, and sex, sex, sex. Russian alliances, The Cold War, Africa, power, the CIA, aquavit, Italian food, Swedish new potatoes with dill, there are endless alleys of stories to turn into and muse and many times get lost.


That is why like the IKEA shopper, the Leif GW Persson reader, needs a small pencil, a notepad and a sleepless night.