He became well known during his tenure, spanning barely a year, as Chief of the special investigation unit into the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme (1986–1987).
[1] After the assassination of Palme, Hans Holmér, then the Chief Commissioner of Stockholm County police, personally took charge of the investigations (and without actually being designated as such, which would lead to later accusations of a breach in operative routines).
During press briefings up to this point, Holmér had insisted, with considerable panache, that the investigations were making steady progress and that, before too long, the crime would be solved.
This rapidly created a rupture between Holmér and the prosecutors who were critical of him for not respecting the demands of the law in making searches and arrests (they were also getting support from the media, now turning against the mesmerizing police chief).
Holmér spent the remainder of his life writing crime novels; he was also appointed to a UN-related police job in Vienna, overseeing the countering of drug trafficking.
Fringe conspiracy theorists have occasionally claimed that Holmér had engaged in deception about his movements on the night of the assassination - the generally accepted view is that he got the news in the morning, hundreds of miles out of Stockholm, having driven up to Dalarna to take part in the cross-country skiing race, Vasaloppet, and then got into his car and turned back towards Stockholm at high speed.
Ironically, due to an oversight by one of the other police bureaucrats in the book, Olof Palme is killed by a completely inexperienced young girl, acting in desperate protest.