The Iron Cross

Two teenagers, wanting to sneak a look at the collection of World War II relics, break into the home of an eccentric historian and find him murdered. Who in this quiet Swedish town, Tanumshhede, had a problem with an old man who devoted his life to exposing Nazi criminals? That question interests the police—but even more so does it interest writer Erika Falck, because it was with the late historian that she tried to find out how, among the things left to her in inheritance, there was a Third Reich medal—the Iron Cross—and why her mother kept a bloodstained little child’s shirt all her life.

The mother’s former friend, now a mentally ill old woman, can’t help Erika—she only mumbles something about old bones that must lie quietly… But over the course of two months, a sudden death takes other witnesses from her mother’s young years.