The first of Indridason's police thrillers to be translated and published in English, this novel was made into a film in Iceland in 2006 under its original title, Myrin. The author worked for many years as a journalist before becoming a crime fiction writer.
His detective, Erlendur, and his team, are responsible for investigating the murder of an elderly man in his basement apartment. The old man turns out to be an unsavory character with a murky past and a number of sordid habits, but there seems to be no reason why someone should now be targeting him for murder. Then Erlendur happens to find an old photograph hidden under a desk drawer: it shows a grave marker for a four year old child. The photograph leads Erlendur on a journey into the past: the inexplicable deaths of children, old crimes ignored and unreported, a man missing for 25 years, a violent and sadistic bully locked in solitary confinement, and new state of the art technology brought to bear on incurable diseases all figure into a story of unintended consequences come home to roost.
Working in the tradition of the crime nordique, this author will appeal to fans of Per Wahloo, Maj Sjowall and Henning Mankell.
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