Book review - "Last Will" by Liza Marklund

October 30, 2025

It's not often that you pick up a fiction book almost 20 years old and find that it is immediately topical and relevant to today's current affairs, but this book published in 2006 is just that. It's about the competition to win a Nobel Prize, and the heading on the jacket blurb asks "How far will a madman go to attain the ultimate prize?".

As said above, the book is about the competition to win the Nobel Prize, in this case for Physiology or Medicine, and the lengths that someone might go to win it. Medicine is one of the prizes (possibly the only one) where winning it brings a possibility of more than the prize money to the recipient, because it can provide great leverage to a pharmaceutical manufacturer who just happens to hold the patents on whatever drug or piece of equipment led to the Prize.

Saying much more than this could give the story away, but the structure of the novel makes sure that the reason behind some murders and the culprits involved aren't obvious until the end.

An added attraction of the book is the insights it gives to Alfred Nobel's life (the title refers to his will and how his fortune was distributed) and also why, when Nobel was Swedish and almost of all the prizes are awarded in Sweden, the Peace Prize is a Norwegian property. You can learn something every day.

The book is thoroughly recommended, as are all the other works by the author. She knows how to create interesting characters and weave a good and gripping story about them, and you can't ask for more than that from an author of fiction.

People who think it's easy to make up stories and write fiction never seem to get around to winning the Booker Prize themselves, so maybe it's not really that easy. At the back of this book there are three-and-a-bit pages of acknowledgements to the people and places who helped with the fact checking.

You can (and should) get a copy from Bathurst Library, or ask at Oberon for an interlibrary loan. If you want to own a copy you might have to search a little.

About the author

Liza Marklund is one of the stars of what is called "Scandi Noir", which is crime fiction set in Scandinavian countries (think Henning Mankell and "Wallander"). Her novels about journalist Annika Bengtzon have sold 23 million copies which is enough to make any author envious, even one who wrote the best selling non-fiction book in Australia one year (25,000 copies sold). No names will be mentioned.

Liza's web site is at www.lizamarklund.com.