Borderline

This is a crime novel on a too topical theme of Westerners kidnapped in Africa.  The journalist heroine must deal with her husband's kidnap with some aid from his Swedish government employers.



Initially Annika Bengtzon is doing her job as a journalist in Sweden as a woman's body is found in the snow behind a nursery school.  Annika sees the boot sticking up from the snow on her way to work.  Unknown to Annika her husband, Thomas Samuelsson, who works for the Department of Justice and has gone in a delegation to Kenya, has been kidnapped by extremists led by Gregoire Makusa near the Somali border.  His experiences are described in excruciating detail alternately with her discovery of his kidnapping and her efforts to deal with this situation.  There is some characterisation of Thomas, mainly as a man who is consistently unfaithful, but the others of his seven member delegation are not really fully characterised.  The emotions of a mother of two children faced with this situation lacking in solid information and knowing the sexual peccadilloes of Thomas are well conveyed.

Her obsession with the murdered woman whose boot she saw and the possibility that she is the victim of a serial killer rather than the victim of her own abusive partner is a distraction from brutal reality.  Annika doesn't really get the chance to investigate this possibility but she manages to attract the attention of her boss to it.  He is obsessed with weird and often imagined stories which he sends his staff to investigate.



The horrific experiences of the various members of the kidnapped delegation are approached in clinical and, in my opinion, excessive detail.  I find that the contrasting stories method of telling what is happening rather distracting.  Annika's effort to handle keeping her children safe and not saying too much about their father's situation and to deal with the presence in her home of government official, Jimmy Halenius, who has been appointed as negotiator to deal with kidnapper's demands is cut with the harrowing experiences of the delegation in Africa.  Eventually the contacts with Africa cease leaving a very uneasy feeling for the reader.    Those around Annika do seem singularly unhelpful. Only the man from Thomas's office is unfailingly present and responsive.  Her relatives and friends offer little but selfish obsession with their own responses.



I think we are all far too familiar with the cruelty of treatment of victims and the harrowing effects on their families back home.  I do not need this clinical exposition - accurate as it may be.  Only Annika really engages our sympathies.  The subplot of the murdered woman really doesn't take off and travails of other journalists add only to the whole atmosphere of disillusionment.  This is a depressing book to read.



There are eight previous books about Annika - occasional references are made to her experiences in the text and these are not easy to follow if this the first adventure of Annika you have read.