I remember my shock and disbelief when I heard the news about the Palme assassination. It astonished me that a national leader could be murdered in a close encounter on a public street with no protective detail around him while he was out for an evening with his wife -- the whole thing just challenged my notions of the limits of the credible and the possible. In my perception of the last several decades, close-up assassins are usually apprehended immediately, though long-gun assassins may escape for a period of time -- or maybe even entirely. The fact that the perpetrator in this case walked up to Palme, shot him at close range, fired also at his wife (but without seriously injuring her), and then melted away into the night in seconds just seemed totally incredible.

For those who are interested, Stieg Larsson did indeed look into the Palme murder before his death, and his notes came into the possession of journalist Jan Stocklassa, who two years ago published a long study of the murder. The English version is called "The Man Who Played with Fire," and it is available on Amazon. The Kindle (e-book) version is dirt cheap. I actually have it waiting on my reader right now. I learned of it last weekend and bought it on the off chance I might be able to squeeze it into my reading list. With this extremely interesting post from forum member reuters, I'm pretty sure I will read Stocklassa's book at this point, but I won't know if I consider it credible until I am fairly far into it.

An American print reviewer described Stocklassa's book as "creative nonfiction," which I optimistically take to mean "fiction-like in its narrative characteristics, but absolutely true to known facts." There will probably be room to argue about how known the facts really are and whether they are correctly interpreted, but that always happens.

The question of the possible value of this revolver was raised but only generally addressed. I would not myself be a buyer at any price because I have no interest in owning murder weapons. My guess is that a few collectors might be interested in acquiring it for a price in the low five figures (US dollars), but much above that and I suspect interest would decline. But all it takes to drive the price to significantly higher levels is two deep-pockets collectors going face-to-face with each other at an auction.

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David Wilson