The Culpability of Albin Runge

Håkan Nesser

Barbarotti is back—this time on Gotland! The #1 Swedish Bestseller.

”I shouldn’t be alive”, writes academic and bus driver Albin Runge in his diary notes in 2013. So, when someone seems to be threatening to kill him, he is very understanding, and even agrees with the would-be killer. But, as the threats become increasingly bizarre, the police starts taking an interest in the case. However, they are too late, and soon, the unfortunate Albin Runge is dead.

Much later, in 2018, Gunnar Barbarotti and Eva Backman are on leave on the island of Gotland, when the strange case of Albin Runge is brought back to the surface. Something in the case from 2013 seems to have gone wrong. Really wrong. Or has it?

Before The Left-Handed League (2018) six years since had past since we last read about Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti. Now he’s back again in the sixth instalment of the series, but this time away from his beloved home in Kymlinge as he’s spending time on the picturesque island of Gotland (where Nesser also lives, incidentally).

The ‘Barbarotti series’ follows Detective Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti, and originally consisted of five instalments published between 2006 and 2012. In the Left-Handed League, Nesser let his two most beloved characters, Van Veeteren and Barbarotti, meet in an unprecedented stand-alone mystery. The celebrated Barbarotti books has sold 2,5 million copies in Sweden, and more than five million copies internationally.

‘Håkan Nesser is a brilliant author, who advances his story with a good dose of humour. To spend a couple of hours in the company of Gunnar Barbarotti and Eva Backman in your reading chair is time well spent.’
— Ölandsbladet

‘Well-written and exhilarating entertainment, characterised by
Nesser’s subtle humour, a page-turner without blood-curdling violent scenes…’

— Dala-Demokraten

‘…the author dares to nurture that which is, and will always be, one of literature’s finest qualities – namely, its slowness.’
— Svenska Dagbladet