Jan Stocklassa - The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson’s Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin

PRAISE FOR JAN STOCKLASSA

An absolutely thrilling story.

Ms 324 (Spain)

Stocklassas research evolves into a true Stieg Larsson thriller.

Stern magazine (Germany)

A hybrid between essay, investigative journalism, and espionage that moves through the path opened by the author of Millennium and approaches the definitive solution.

El Pas (Spain)

A book that includes the works of Larsson and Stocklassa, written as a crime novel. With conspiracies, characters, and situations that seem to come from one of Larssons stories, but real.

Catalunya Rdio

[Stocklassa] handles the legacy of Stieg Larsson, staying true to the author, and gives it a dramatic and action-packed dimension that holds all the way through... He comes to the end with a story of a single shot that hit Sweden right in the heart.

Politiken (Denmark)

The inspiration from Stieg Larsson is clear, [and] the book is written as if it were a novel; Stocklassa... succeeds in keeping the excitement up and the skepticism downand [in]... tying all the threads together in this extremely complicated affair.

Weekendavisen (Denmark)

Jan Stocklassa has written a deeply fascinating book about the different theories surrounding the assassination of Olof Palme.

Kbenhavneravisen (Denmark)

A documentary book that reads in the same way as the best thrillers, including the cold sweats.

La Dpche du Midi (France)

It resembles a Stieg Larsson book.

Le Journal du Dimanche (France)

Thanks to Jan Stocklassas fascinating narrative, [the Olof Palme case] is now progressing at the quick pulse of the Millennium Series.

Le Monde (France)

Text copyright 2018 by Jan Stocklassa

English translation copyright 2019 by Tara F. Chace

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Previously published as Stieg Larssons arkiv: Nyckeln till Palmemordet by Bokfabriken in Sweden in 2018. Translated from Swedish by Tara F. Chace. First published in English by Amazon Crossing in 2019.

Published by Amazon Crossing, Seattle

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Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Crossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542092937 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1542092930 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781542092944 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 1542092949 (paperback)

Cover design by Rex Bonomelli

Unless otherwise noted, images used by permission of Bokfabriken.

First edition

Contents

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlons razor

Foreword

Everything used to be so simple. Pluto was a planet. Milk was good for you. Diesel was cleaner than gasoline. If you swam right after a meal, you might get cramps and drown. The 1986 assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme would never be solved. But old truths are increasingly being turned on their heads. The new truth is: the assassination of Olof Palme is going to be solved.

For me, everything began in 2008 in the most Swedish way possiblejudging from the majority of Swedens murder mysteries anyway. A woman was murdered near a lake in the region of Smland, which gave me an idea for a book about murder locations. A little over a year later, it turned out that the explanation for the death was also very Swedish. The police found new forensic evidence, and the killer turned out to be a moose. But by that point I had already given up on my original idea and was deep into the adventure that created this book.

After five years of research, I found Stieg Larssons forgotten archives and stepped into a world of people and events that felt like they came right out of one of Stiegs books: access to emails, secret recordings, undercover operations... and death, a lot of cruel, sudden death. The characters were as extreme as Lisbeth Salander and Alexander Zalachenko, only realmurderers and their victims, spies who spy on other spies, murdered women and children.

Stieg Larssons three booksknown as the Millennium Trilogy or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo serieshave sold more than eighty million copies, but his greatest achievement wasnt writing thrillers. He devoted his entire adult life to fighting right-wing extremism. By the early 1990s, he was already warning about the threat posed by the newly started Sweden Democrats party, the very party that upended the status quo by garnering over 17 percent of the vote in the recent 2018 parliamentary elections, plunging parliamentary balance and the selection of a new prime minister into a period of months-long chaos.

Stiegs second-biggest project was researching the Olof Palme assassination. This is evident in his archives, where most of the material has to do with right-wing extremism, but that interest segued seamlessly into his research on the Palme assassination and led to concrete theories and tips for the police.

I have carried on the work started by Stieg, analyzing his theories and ideas, digging deeper, and contributing new pieces to the puzzle. The picture emerging explains not only a number of the strange circumstances surrounding the assassination but also accounts for the motive behind it. I believe I have a good picture of what happened during the period leading up to the murder and on the night of the shooting itself, February 28, 1986, as well as who was at the scene. I will lay out a possible solution; you can form your own opinion based on the facts and conclusions I present.

What you are holding in your hands is a work of creative nonfiction. It is written like a thriller, but its factual. Over thirty pages of this book consist of Stiegs own writing as a journalistletters and memosfrom long before he became a world-famous author. Many of the dialogues are transcribed word for word, while others are dramatized based on documents in Stiegs archives and over a hundred interviews that I conducted with people such as Eva Gabrielsson, Stiegs long-term partner. Theres more information in the afterword about background sources and materials and how I used them. If you want to delve deeper into details about the Palme assassination, I recommend the Review Commissions (Granskningskommissionen) one-thousand-page report and any book by Gunnar Wall or Lars Borgnstwo of Swedens foremost experts on the Palme assassinationbut there are inexhaustible quantities of information to study. One warning is called for if you want to dig deeper: Be careful! The Palme assassination is a nasty virus that many people have caught.

There is some irony to the fact that a prime ministers assassination would go unsolved in Sweden in particular. In a country where everything can be measured and everything can be explained, Palmes assassination remains an open wound, where no truth seems to hold up to scrutiny. But that is going to change.

The mystery will finally be solved. According to Krister Petersson, the chief prosecutor currently leading the Palme investigation, Olof Palme was not shot by Christer Pettersson, the alcoholic who was assumed guilty by many Swedes. And I believe Krister Petersson is right. I am also convinced that Stieg Larssons research will contribute to the solution. Hopefully this book will as well.

As you read this, the police will have gained access to my materials and will be acting on them. For the first time in many years, a new suspect has been interviewed and the police continue to follow the theory and leads that Stieg laid out thirty years ago.