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Thursday 18 December 2014

‘Black Lies, Red Blood’ by Kjell Eriksson



Published by Allison & Busby,
22 May 2014.
ISBN: 978-0-74901-503-9

Inspector Ann Lindell of Upsala Police force is madly in love with a journalist, Anders Brandt. When he leaves suddenly on an assignment, she finds he’s the prime suspect in the murder of a homeless man.

This Swedish cosy focused as much on the lives of the police characters as it did on the two key investigations: the disappearance of a sixteen-year-old girl, Klara, and the death of Bosse Grandsberg. Ann’s sudden affair with Brandt is convincingly drawn, and you want her to find happiness at last. However I found the book slow-moving and at times hard to follow; it moved from head to head around a large number of characters, and there was a lot of introspection. The PP staples were there (interviews, suspects, forensic results etc), but there didn’t seem quite enough plot to justify 477 pages.

A Swedish PP, cosy rather than noir. It worked as a stand-alone, but there were a lot of references to Lindell’s past, so you might like to start with the first novel to be translated (the fourth in the series), The Princess of Burundi.
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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

Kjell Eriksson is the author of the internationally acclaimed The Princess of Burundi which won the Swedish Crime Academy Award for Best Crime Novel and is the first in his series starring Ann Lindell. He lives in Sweden.


Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

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