The Cruel Stars of the Night: A Mystery

This had great storyline and kept me hooked. I thought the ending happened abruptly and could have went into better detail.

..'mysteries' I have read, and I have read a lot. In some ways better than master Mankel.

There is a new light on the horizon! Those who love an intelligent read and don't feel the need for a bookcover to hide behind will be glad for the entrance of Kjell Erikson to their bookshelves. His characters are humanly drawn and his plots are careful. These are people we can live with in our own lives---even the bad guys! I recommend "The Princess of Burundi" as well. First rate!

Laura Hindersten's professor father has gone missing and, while he may have just took off without telling her (though tyrannical, he is exceptionally eccentric), she is convinced something horrible has happened to him. The members of the Uppsala Violent Crime Division are certain the professor - an expert on the Renaissance poet Petrarch - will turn up. But they are much more concerned with the murders of several elderly men in the region and how that may affect the upcoming visit by Queen Silvia, scheduled to arrive in a few days to open the new Academic Hospital. Police Inspector Ann Lindell suspects there may be links between the murders and the missing professor, a hunch born out by evidence presented by the professor's colleague. As the body count and public anxiety increases, there's pressure on Inspector Lindell and the rest of the team to determine if the deaths are the work of a serial killer. The Cruel Stars of the Night, the sequel to Kjell Eriksson's critically acclaimed debut, The Princess of Burundi, once again features the Uppsala Violent Crime Division and Police Inspector Ann Lindell. Police procedurals are standard mystery fare, yet Eriksson takes this well-worn formula and crafts something extraordinary. His character-driven mysteries feature an ensemble "cast" and the personality and motivation of each member of the Uppsala Violent Crime Division is fleshed out in tandem with the details of the case. Eriksson's police men and women are very human, each with their own way of balancing work and home. Lindell, a single parent raising a young son, wonders if she is a "good" parent, while coping with loss and loneliness. This is not an action-filled thriller. Eriksson lets the tension build slowly, playing out the psychological clues like an expert angler - ensuring his audience is hooked before ratcheting up the tension. Readers may be able to takes breaks from Eriksson's work in the early chapters; however, once the pieces begin to fall together, The Cruel Stars of the Night becomes impossible to put down. Armchair Interviews agrees completely.

I was surprised to learn that this was only Eriksson's second book about Ann Lindell (the chief investigator on the case). The police team characters seemed to have been together for awhile and the author does a great job conveying a sense of a long-standing team working well together. I was looking forward to finding earlier books of the series but I guess I have to be satisfied with there being only one. I liked the book a lot despite the fact that, to me anyway, there was no mystery of who the killer had to be. The mystery was, why the obvious killer was the killer. It certainly wasn't obvious to the police who, except for Lindell, never made a connection between the old professor's disappearance and the murders of the old men. I thought the bit with the chess pieces and the potential connection to an assassination attempt on the queen was a total distraction. It might have work better if the author had explained a bit better what the connection was. The old chess match history was interesting but I never did get the connection. But that was only a minor complaint. On the whole I enjoyed the book quite a lot. I had a hard time putting it down.

In Sweden, the Uppsala Violent Crime Division police department struggles with cases that does not make sense as they cannot find a connection though the crimes are similar. Two elderly men are murdered with a third missing. The local police hope to rescue the missing man, retired professor Hindersten although they expect foul play has already occurred. While officers Ann Lindell, Ola Haver, Sammy Nilsson, and Allan Fredricksson struggle with making progress, the daughter of the missing man, Laura Hindersten begins to crack under this new crisis. Desperate, the cops lean towards a real life chess game with the taking out of Sweden's Queen Silvia being checkmate. However lone wolf Lindell disagrees and tries a different path that could lead to the death of the cop. The exciting story line rotates between two strong subplots; that of an ensemble police procedural and a psychological thriller. They share in common frustration as the police struggle with a serial killer in which the dots fail to connect while Laura is losing control. As with THE PRINCESS OF BURUNDI, Ann sticks out amongst the police as she goes down a different path than her peers. Kjell Eriksson provides a one sitting clever whodunit. Harriet Klausner