The Princess of Burundi

The book opens with the discovery at a snow dump of the body of John Jonsson, unemployed welder and authority on tropical fish. He’s been horribly mutilated and the police must work their way through a technical investigation to discover who killed him. There’s a whole cast of coppers doing the investigating including the compassionate senior officer an extreme germaphobe and a new mum who’s bored being on maternity leave. They’re an interesting bunch of people. They have insecurities and make mistakes and don’t immediately get all the answers right and are far more deeply philosophical about their horrid jobs than would be the case in American or English crime fiction.

At the same time as the investigation proceeds we’re show more introduced to Jonsson’s wife, son, brother and friends who are all equally unable to explain the murder. Or are they? Jonsson’s brother Lennart decides to carry out his own investigation into his much-loved brother’s death and stirs up a hornet’s nest or three in the process.

Early on we also meet Vincent and it’s immediately clear he has a few sheep loose in the top paddock (he writes hundreds of complaint letters about everything around him and keeps an old store mannequin in his bed). However watching Vincent’s deterioration into total madness was the highlight of the book for me. The best writing and most credible plot developments involve this aspect of the novel, although in the end quite a lot of this is irrelevant to the main plot which is odd.

The rest of the story is a little bit awkward and the ultimate resolution feels contrived. I don’t mind not predicting the outcome of a mystery (happens all the time) but when revealed there should be a 20-20 hindsight which makes the reader think “ahhhh…of course…I see it now” and this ending provoked more of a "what the...?"

I’ve never been to Sweden but I have certainly built a picture of this corner of it from reading this very evocative book. Alongside the police procedural element of the novel is a social commentary that basically says “life in Uppsala is bleak and if even if you’re not poor or foreign you’ll spend most of your spare moments being miserable and wishing you were somewhere else or some-time else”. All of which might be true but a joke here or a smile there would have provided some much needed balance to the book although I do wonder if my need for a bit of light and shade is my Aussie sensibility showing through. show less

Maybe a bit dry but very realistic crime story from Uppsala with greatly written characters. Some may find it slow pacing and lack of twists but this realism is what I like in it.

This is a book I didn't like as much as I thought I would - I think I found the plot to convoluted, with too many red herrings, that seemed out of place.

Dark and violent at times but very well-written. It's part of a series with the same detectives so I did struggle a bit to know which one was which but all the characters, suspects and detectives, are very well-drawn and there is a wonderful sense of place. My only complaint is that the solution appears quite suddenly and the ending is very good but quite abrupt. However, I would read more by him.

Like most police procedurals, this one begins with a murder - in this case a man is found tortured and stabbed to death. The police are somewhat baffled with this one. When an old school chum is assaulted, they think it might have some connection but, then again, maybe not:-) I enjoyed this procedural set in Uppsala (north of Stockholm) and will certainly read more by this author, but I'm not terribly fond of a climax-as-book's-ending thing. I like a little denouement, if you know what I mean. The author seems to take great pains to make his characters, both the victims and the police, sympathetically credible, so points for that.

Not quite up to the standards of Mankell or Ake Edwardson, imo, but I'll keep reading this author's work and show more see if I change my mind. I did drag this book on four international flights, managing only to read half of it due to a lack of concentration. This could have affected my overall evaluation when I finally did finish it. show less

A dense police procedural from Swedish writer Kjell Ericksson, which is in the same league with other Scandinavian greats like Mankell and Fossum. Yet again, we find ourselves in a country town, where the disappearance of a young husband starts a series of terrifying events. The detective, Inspector Ann Lindell, is believable and engaging, as are most of her colleagues (a few are not so engaging). The characterization is splendid, and the brooding atmosphere of a town in crisis is convincingly conveyed.

Set in Uppsala, the story does a nice job in highlighting that the city is definitely not just a traditional university town, but that it has been suffering from growth and instability -- not necessarily new themes. The crimes, however, did not really work for me that well, and the ending felt rather contrived.