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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.738
EAN num: 9780312366698
ISBN number: 0312366698
Label: St. Martin's Minotaur
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Minotaur
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: April 29, 2008
Publishing house: St. Martin's Minotaur
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 99314
Studio: St. Martin's Minotaur
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Already a huge star in Europe and the Nordic countries, Kjell Eriksson has American critics also raving, with almost every review studded with words like 'stunning,' 'chilling,' 'suspenseful,' 'haunting,' and 'brilliant.'
In The Demon of Dakar, Ann Lindell and her motley crew of colleagues are faced with a most baffling murder case in which all clues lead straight back to a popular local restaurant named Dakar. The owner, Slobodan Andersson, has some shady connections in his past, and his partner's reputation is equally murky.
The kitchen crew is not above suspicion, either. The meat chef is an oddball, to say the least, while unbeknownst to the rest, the newest hire's personal life is a tangled web of lies. Even Eva Willman, the seemingly blameless older woman returning to the workforce as a waitress, has skeletons in her closet.
And then the tension rachets up a number of notches as it becomes apparent that one murder has not satisfied the killer in the least. If Ann is to prevent a bloodbath at Restaurant Dakar, she must match wits with a killer whose motives are seemingly completely obscure.
But the reader knows the killer well. His crimes are justified from his point of view. Not only that, he's a very likable fellow who is only looking for justice. As in all of Kjell Eriksson's compelling spellbinders, though, justice entails a frantic race to the finish, a race without rules and fraught with danger.
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Rated by buyers 
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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 very 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.
Rated by buyers 
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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'.
Rated by buyers 
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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.
Rated by buyers -
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.
Rated by buyers -
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
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