To oblige an old school friend, Detective Sigurdur Oli agrees to make an "unofficial" visit to dissuade a blackmailer who is trying to extort money with sexually explicit photographs. But when Oli arrives on the blackmailer's doorstep he finds her critically injured and surprises her assailant, who runs from the scene.
Oli's investigation is further complicated by his own feelings of bitterness and resentment, as his personal life is falling apart and his career seems to have hit a dead end, while so many of his contemporaries are rocketing to success in the wild financial boom Iceland is experiencing. When the victim dies in hospital, Sigurdur Oli is faced with investigating the murder without revealing his own reasons for being present at the murder scene.
This is the ninth entry in the Inspector Erlendur series; interestingly, it is written in parallel to the eighth novel, Outrage, in which Erlendur is also absent under increasingly mysterious circumstances. In these two novels, Erledur's two subordinates, Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli, are working on their own, without Erlendur's guidance. Elinborg must learn to trust her instincts and assert herself; Sigurdur Oli must learn question his assumptions and take responsibility for his mistakes.
Moving between the brazen greed of Reykjavik's nouveau riche and the self-destructive dispair of lives lost to poverty, drugs and squalor, Black Skies is another gripping story from Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger winner, Arnaldur Indridason.
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