Customer Reviews

The Demon of Dakar: A Mystery (Ann Lindell Mysteries)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Yet another police mystery from Sweden (what is it with these Swedes? They have one of the lowest murder rates in the world and one of the highest proportions of murder mysteries).
This one is set in the cathedral town of Uppsala. Its strength is the way the author reveals the workings of an entire police department. We get to know several of the detectives, not only at work but in their personal lives as well. The panorama of the book then is quite wide. We also get an interesting cross-section of the seamier side of Uppsala society -- the single mother trying to raise two teenage boys and hold down a job, the disaffected immigrant community and we also see a little bit of Uppsala's underworld focusing on the burgeoning problem of drugs in a place which had been largely immune to such problems.
The book runs into difficulties when the author also tries to get inside the head of his villain (I'm not giving anything away here -- it is revealed early in the book). This is a Mexican who has come to avenge the death of his brother killed in a drugs deal gone bad. Here, the book goes completely wacky. How can this poor former illegal immigrant to the United States buy a ticket to Sweden, rent a car, murder someone and then hang out in open sight for weeks on end? The motive for the killing -- a tattoo -- is also unrealistic.
The end of the book comes as a severe anti-climax. So yes, there is a lot that is good here but I would view it as a flawed effort.

Uppsala, Sweden Police Detective Ann Lindell works a difficult homicide case as she struggles to identify the victim found floating in a river. The corpse is eventually identified as Armas, a co-owner of the upscale restaurant Dakar. Ann visits the other partner, Slobodan Andersson who also owns Alhambra and has questionable financing connections and plenty of enemies.

However the suspect list remains long besides Slobodan and his adversaries. Ann considers recently hired waitress Eva Willman and her two teen boys, chef Johnny Kvarnheden, homeless Konrad Rosenberg and Mexican peasant Manuel Alavez seeking to free his incarcerated brother.

The fascination with this superior third Swedish police procedural (see THE CRUEL STARS OF THE NIGHT and THE PRINCESS OF BURUNDI) is the cast as perspective is told from various participants so that the same incident is seen differently and their political viewpoints especially anti Bush runs strong. The investigation led by Ann is wonderful to follow as she, like the readers, meet the restaurant's players who all have motive to kill the victim. A slight adjustment is needed to Swedish nomenclature as delineating the names of people and places require full concentration, but THE DEMON OF DAKAR is worth the time.

Harriet Klausner

The book jacket proclaims unanimous praise for Kjell Erickson, but I cannot join the chorus. 'The Demon of Dakar' is part-police procedural, part-psychological analysis, part social commentary and nearly always confusing and unconvincing.

A close friend and business associate of a restaurant owner turns up done to death. The reader knows who did it and thus can see the police try to connect the pieces. That the police struggle to do so and then look down seemingly logical, but wrong paths is one of the book's more interesting threads. Erickson introduces a veritable army of characters from within the police department, restaurants, the drug world, a prison escape, flight for the border, and so on and on.

Erickson's book contains enough characters, ideas for story lines, and themes to fill three books, but he tries to squeeze them all into one book. The result is unsatisfying confusion and half-told stories. And as another reviewer has pointed out, some of the stories are simply implausible. Moreover, the book suffers from a poor translation from Swedish to English. The translation uses clearly incorrect words in some places, stilted wording in others.

Smarter people than me have recommended Erickson's works, so you may want to take a look for yourself, but with all the excellent European crime writers (e.g. Andrea Camilleri, Leonard Sciascia, Sjowall and Wahloo, and Ian Rankin) out there I cannot recommend 'The Demon of Dakar'.

Slobodan Andersson and his partner, an Armenian named Armas are doing well in the restaurant business, especially with their restaurant in Uppsala, Sweden called Dakar. But doing well in the restaurant biz just isn't completely foating their boat moneywise, so they decided to dip into the drug trade and Armas gets himself killed.

Policewoman and single mother Ann Lindell get the case and she's not exactly overjoyed about it, because theirs a lot going on in her life right now. And her investigation isn't going to be smooth and easy, of course, they never are, but this one is complicated by the fact that almost none of the restaurant's employees speaks Swedish and they all seem to be having their own little forays into crime of one kind or another.

This is Ericksson's third Ann Lindell novel and it can very easily read as a standalone. That's the way I read it, but I'm going to go out and get the first two now. Mr. Ericksson, unlike a lot of other mystery writers, doesn't tie up all the lose ends, so his book is more like real life, because in life lose ends rarely get tied up, usually they're left dangling in the wind. Also, you'll get a good insight into Sweden and Swedish society with this book, but it's not thrown in your face, it just kind of seeps in. This is a nice mystery, a good book.

I agree completely with other reviewers who have criticized the translation of this book. This is the third book in this series that I have read. Sadly, all of them suffer from poor translation, which makes these otherwise interesting police procedurals very difficult reading. The language is stilted, and sometimes quite comical in its use and misuse of English. Swedish colloquialisms and cultural references are simply translated directly into English without explanation, leaving the reader confused and annoyed.

In my opinion, translations should be done by a person who is a native speaker of the language into which the book is being translated. A native English-speaker who is fluent in Swedish would have been much better able to translate from Swedish into colloquial English than a native Swedish-speaker who is also fluent in English. If you want to see what I mean, read the Harry Hole series by Jo Nesbo (translated from Norwegian) and The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler (translated from Swedish). These translations enhance rather than remind you at every turn that you are reading a translation.

This is the third book in the Ann Lindell series of murders in Sweden, and it's a pretty good one. It has a convoluted plot, involving restaurants, drugs, Mexicans, and other assorted characters and things. Once again, Ann Lindell and her squad are called upon to solve the murder of a friend of the owner of several restaurants. The people who work in the restaurants are finely drawn, and quite believable. Also, so are Ann and her police colleagues.

My only problem with the book is that the plot meandered along, rather than getting to the pint most times. Perhaps this is acceptable in Swedish mysteries, where often the characters outshine the plot. I found it a bit tedious, and my mind tended to wander a lot while reading. Don't get me wrong; this is a well written and quite good book, and if you like Scandinavian writers, I think that you will enjoy this one.

I love the Swedish mystery writers, ie: Henning Mankell, Åsa Larson, Hakan Nesser. etc...I don't speak Swedish so I depend on really good translation to keep the story flowing with a definable rhythm. I've found this book to have a great premise and a good story but I had a difficult time with the narrative flow.

My review is of the translation, and not the novel, because the translation is so bad that it is hard to follow the story. Really, it is a terrible job, and should have been caught at the editorial level. I am really shocked at St. Martins for letting this slip through. I feel for the writer who may very well have written a good book.

Ann Lindell, a homicide detective in Uppsala, methodically investigates the apparent murder of a naked man near the city. No one has been reported missing and there are few clues, except for the postmortem removal of a strange tattoo.

From such little information she patiently peels back layer upon layer of the conundrum wrapped within the mystery. Who is this man? Why was he killed here? Why has no one reported him missing? What was removed from him?

The answers lead to an international drug conspiracy stretching across Europe to a Mexican village, which three brothers left for different reasons. Racing against time, the police uncover the source of the sea of cocaine lapping the streets of the city, but will they catch the killer who slips quietly in and out of Uppsala like a ghost? For the answers to these questions you must first read, with great enjoyment, this superb Swedish police procedural.