Thank you Twelve Books and Netgalley for sharing this true crime investigation story. I put off reading this for quite a long time after receiving it because I had seen media coverage of a documentary released last year called Cold Case Hammerskjold. The reviews of that documentary made it sound like a not very credible tale of a crackpot conspiracy theorist (which it may or may not be, I never did watch it). But after a comment in this book, I understand the documentary and the book are not the same. This book investigates (as best as possible) multiple possibilities for what made Dag Hammerskjold’s plane crash in 1961. While there is no satisfactory conclusion at the end, it’s still an informative and rather gripping tale, as much about the state of the Congo at that time as about the mystery itself. I enjoyed it and learned a lot about geopolitics and the UN at that time.

I have only read the first chapter and I'm fascinated. This will be a good book to hand-sell to my history readers at the library. The writing is crisp, personal, and brings to life the variety of people involved in the times. This is good narrative nonfiction.

This superb book considers in fine detail , the thoughts, ideas and investigations that occurred around Dag Hammersjkold’s death in the 1960’s
Well explored, fleshed out and written , almost it’s only fault is that is a little too in depth and so has to remind you where it’s at, every now and then.
Was so interested in the story, which I vaguely remember as a child in the ‘60s that I’ve gone off and had a chat with a couple of older friends who remember these events more clearly.
Highly recommended

There is plenty of intrigue to keep one following along in this book of spies and movers and shakers. I was never aware of all the dark power struggles that were going on so far back, and that there were all these foreign countries involved, playing games to rob them of their valuable resources. The movies later made us aware of blood diamonds, but that is just one part, it turns out, of what is being mined from Africa and making people rich. That all makes for big and sometimes violent power struggles.

When the UN tried to help, sometimes unwanted by a faction, they still tried to calm the situation. This book looks at what happened to Dag Hammarskjold when he tried to go to Ndola to negotiate peace in the area and was killed along with his aides and crew as they were about to land. It’s been a long-standing mystery as to what actually happened to his plane to cause the accident, even after the investigation was done. The author was able to find more information that was disregarded by the authorities from witnesses. Advanced electronic review copy was provided by NetGalley, author Ravi Somaiya, and the publisher.

This book followes the death of Dag Hammarskjöld. He died in a plane crash, and the reason of the crash is still disputed. In this book there are new evidence about the case, according to the blurb. I am very into true crime, and I have never heard of this case before, so I wanted to know more about this book and the case. My issue with the book was the huge infodump at the beginning. It was 100 pages of information and history before we got to the actual crash. I don’t think that it was nesesairy to have this amount of information. We even got a history of the Congo, which I don’t think contributed to the story. The first 100 pages also reads like a fiction book. It was like a biography of Dag Hammarskjöld. If this would be condensed into a chapter of 2, it would be better into my opinion. Give me some backstory on this guy, but not his entire life story. I was waiting for the crash to happen and for the investigation to start for quite a while. In the second half of the book, it got really interesting, as then the investigation stars. I really liked the investigation into his death, and the crash. I also learned a lot about Congo, even though I don’t think the info is nesseasary. Overall I do recommend the book though.