Ann Lindell Mysteries - Kjell Eriksson

"Kjell Eriksson's crime novels are among the best."
Henning Mankell

Karl Stig Kjell Eriksson (born 1953 in Uppsala) is a Swedish crime-writer, author of the novels The Princess of Burundi and The Cruel Stars of the Night, the former of which was awarded the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy Best Swedish Crime Novel Award in 2002.

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.

The Princess of Burundi

(The first book in the Ann Lindell series)

The Princess of Burundi begins, benignly enough, with a morning jog. The run turns deadly when the jogger finds a mutilated body in the snow. The victim is soon identified as the town+s reformed troublemaker and an expert on tropical fish.Inspector Ann Lindell, despite being on maternity leave, is determined to find the brutal killer. Soon enough she is drawn into a cruel cat-and-mouse game that leads to the deadliest of confrontations.Like previous winners Peter Hoeg and Henning Mankell, Kjell Eriksson makes a stunning U.S. debut with this engrossing novel.


The Cruel Stars of the Night

(The second book in the Ann Lindell series)

The novel opens one snowy day when thirty-five-year-old Laura Hindersten goes to the police to report that her father, a local professor, is missing. Inspector Ann Lindell and her colleagues can find no motive for the man's disappearance. And when the corpses of two elderly men do turn up, neither of the dead men is the missing academic.
Unexpectedly, the police get help from one of the professor's colleagues, who believes there is an astonishing link between the murders and the disappearance of Professor Hindersten. But as the pressure on Lindell increases dramatically, she is shocked to discover that the killer has many more diabolical schemes in store.

Combining heart-pounding suspense with brilliant psychological insight, The Cruel Stars of the Night moves like a comet as it approaches the cliff-hanging climax. It is sure to win Kjell Eriksson a whole new galaxy of American fans.


The Demon from Dakar

(The third book in the Ann Lindell series)

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.


The Hand That Trembles

(The fourth book in the Ann Lindell series)

A Swedish county commissioner walks out of a high-level meeting and disappears. Many years later, one of the town's natives is convinced that he's caught a glimpse of the missing man while traveling in Bangalore, India. When the rumors reach his hometown, a veteran police officer stumbles across a seemingly unrelated case. Ann Lindell, Eriksson's series detective, must investigate a severed female foot found where a striking number of inhabitants are single men. But the owner of the house where the victim believed to have lived is no longer able to answer any questions….