The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson's Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin

Written by Jan Stocklassa

Narrated by Ulf Bjorklund

“A fascinating ‘creative nonfiction’ account of the greatest unsolved mystery in Swedish history.” —Wall Street Journal

“It’s more than just a thrilling book…There’s a lot of evidence that points to an international conspiracy.” —CBS This Morning Saturday

The author of the Millennium novels laid out the clues. Now a journalist is following them.

When Stieg Larsson died, the author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had been working on a true mystery that out-twisted his Millennium novels: the assassination on February 28, 1986, of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister. It was the first time in history that a head of state had been murdered without a clue who’d done it—and on a Stockholm street at point-blank range.

Internationally known for his fictional villains, Larsson was well acquainted with their real-life counterparts and documented extremist activities throughout the world. For years he’d been amassing evidence that linked their terrorist acts to what he called “one of the most astounding murder cases” he’d ever covered. Larsson’s archive was forgotten until journalist Jan Stocklassa was given exclusive access to the author’s secret project.

In The Man Who Played with Fire, Stocklassa collects the pieces of Larsson’s true-crime puzzle to follow the trail of intrigue, espionage, and conspiracy begun by one of the world’s most famous thriller writers. Together they set out to solve a mystery that no one else could.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Translator: Tara F. Chace
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781799748588

Jan Stocklassa

Jan Stocklassa is a Swedish writer and journalist focusing on large-scale conspiracies in international politics. In his books, Stocklassa uses a narrative nonfiction style to unveil unknown facts about important events in recent history. His breakthrough came with the critically acclaimed bestseller Stieg Larsson’s Archive: The Key to the Palme Murder, a narrative nonfiction book published in 2018 that has been sold in more than fifty countries and translated into twenty-six languages. Following its publication, Swedish police began actively pursuing the leads presented in the book in the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme. His professional career includes being a Swedish diplomat, launching the Metro newspaper in Prague, and collaborating as a journalist with major media houses in Sweden and abroad, as well as coproducing the movie and TV series Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played with Fire.

Reviews for The Man Who Played with Fire

[baochuan-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book played out Stieg Larsoon's research and theory regarding the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986. The author did a good job and the book is not as dry as I expected it to be.

[nancyina2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Apparently, I'm not a fan of unsolved crime books. My lack of familiarity with Swedish names and places didn't help. I was curious about Palme's death because of mentions in Swedish mystery books, but I'm over that now.

This audio book took me much too long to finish. Now I'm behind in my reading goals.

[Joaquín Montalbán · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great. Awesome. (Translated from Spanish)