The Princess of Burundi

The first book in the Ann Lindell series

Yaikes! I don't recommend it! I disliked the story and the style of writing!

I hate giving such low ratings, but this was awful. I gave up more than halfway through--I'm too old to waste my time on really bad writing-- and I have no idea who the main character was supposed to be, and should one know that after 180 pages? I didn't know who I supposed to like, as none of the characters was the least bit likable. There was no princess, and no Burundi--although I suspect that eventually a ship might become involved. Really, I just don't care how it ended.

Maybe it was my mood (after all, it did win an award), or maybe it was the translation, but i found it odd and boring, and never finished it.

I really wanted to like this Swedish best seller but in truth, found it a tough slog. It is a police procedural but extremely slow moving ( til the end) and a deeply introspective story. Much of the story takes place in each character's mind, the conversations they have with themselves being much wordier & revealing than the conversations they have with each other. Then all of a sudden, the identity & subsequent capture of the murderer , the discovery of a missing child & an assault on his mother plus another murder all take place in the last 20 pages. I would have appreciated some of this action a little earlier in the story.

This is book #4 in the Detectives Ann Lindell and Ola Haver series set in Oslo but was the first to be translated into English; one British reviewer said it’s “a very good book but humourless” and another said “cold, unrelenting, grim, excellent” but other reviewers say it’s only so-so; I think those reviewers are only half right and I don’t know what the basis for the criticisms could be, because it’s a rather good police procedural; and no, it’s not “humourless” but even if it were, this is a murder mystery and not a joke book, though people used to airport stuff might be expect it to be a laugh a minute as indeed a few of the better ones are; anyhow, all murder mysteries are “grim” to one extent or another; but I do not think it is at all “cold” and the characters are often given a mix of good and bad features and are sufficiently well-described that their motivations and internal conflicts become understandable to the reader; and whatever it is, it is not “so-so”; one of the book’s best features is that it is Swedish and the translator has not stooped to changing things Swedish into alien things American for the sake of greater US book sales