Another hit from Asa Larsson, the “queen of black novels”

Prosecutor Asa Larsson, outraged at the boastful superiority with which judges treat women, pregnant with her first child, has time to write thanks to the welfare state. Her father, a librarian, Lutheran and communist, had trained her for that. But she’s not going to waste time on a book of spiritual recipes. She wants to write a black novel that denounces the judges and corruption. One like Hanning Mankell and Stieg Larsson. She began by inventing Rebecka Martisson, a grumpy, lonely, selfish lawyer, interested in showing the violence in which she lives. When she finished “Aurora borealis” she swore to herself “if it doesn’t work I’ll write three more; if it goes, six”. Her first film sold out editions and the Swedish Academy awarded her. It was thought that she was helped by her last name. He was the same as the creator of the “Millennium” saga. She laughed, there was no family tie. Her luck accompanied her in the following five novels, all international best sellers. She was crowned “queen of crime fiction”. Religious, she had to fulfill her oath, conclude Rebecka’s saga. For ten years she couldn’t. She justified herself with the fact that she had to write a youth series so that her son and her friends would return to reading. After ten years, he gained strength to say goodbye to Rebecka with a powerful story, “The sin of our parents”, where everything that has given him fame is found: domestic violence, corruption, mafia power, political deals, a miner digging the ground. of a sinking city, the one where Asa lives. Complaints, violence, captivating intrigue, perverse pasts that come to light. The title, says Asa, recalls that “we inherit the sorrows and weaknesses of our parents and grandparents, and sometimes we pass them on to our children. It is unavoidable. But it would be necessary to try that each one eats her own shit, and not the inherited one. It’s important to talk about your own past to get rid of it.” It all starts with a dying pathologist who asks Rebecka to investigate a case from 60 years ago. She’s not interested, but she’s secretly moved by the foster child that she was, and that retired nurse who discovered the father of a boxing champion, who had disappeared decades ago, in the freezer of that brother’s house, had been when she was a girl like her sister. .