Into Oblivion by Arnaldur Indridason

Into Oblivion: An Icelandic Thriller by Arnaldur Indridason; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 345 pages

The eleventh book in Indridason's crime fiction series; this one, like 2015's Reykjavik Nights, is a prequel to the original series, showing us Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson at the start of his career as a detective, and his relationship with his partner and mentor, the enigmatic Marion Briem.

In this book Erlendur and Marion are called in to investigate when the body of a man is found in a remote lagoon formed by the runoff from a geothermal power station. Clearly the man did not drown, but was put into the water after death. Instead his fatal injuries resulted from a fall from an immense height onto a hard surface.  The dead man's clothing leads Marion and Erlendur to suspect a connection with nearby American military base. It's 1979 and the Cold War is at its height. The American presence is unpopular with many Icelanders, There is a thriving black market in American products, including drugs and alcohol, fueling an increase in crime and social problems.

In his spare time Erlendur is also looking into a cold case: a girl gone missing on her way to school 25 years before, and never heard from again. Her parents died not knowing her fate.  For personal reasons, Erlendur is obsessed with this case and others like it; to find answers for those left to endure such painful losses.

Another haunting story from the Iclandic master of Nordic Noir.

Reykjavik Nights by Arnaldur Indridason

Reykjavik Nights: An Inspector Erlendur Novel by Arnaldur Indridason; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 294 pages

The ninth Inspector Erlendur novel is a prequel, going back in time to 1974 to show us the young Erlendur at the start of his career, assigned to the Traffic Division of the Reykjavik police, working the night shift, dealing with car crashes, robberies, fights, drunks drug addicts and the occasional unnatural death, while respectable citizens are sleeping.

Erlendur is already displaying his stoic, almost anti-social nature, and his talent for dogged, persistent investigation.

On one of the long Northern nights, a homeless drunk Erlendur has encountered on the streets turns up drowned in a waste pond. No one is particularly surprised by Hannibal's death. A respectable married woman named Oddny, walking home from a night out with friends, disappeared the same night. She was trapped in an unhappy marriage; the police suspect suicide, but the case will remain officially open until they find the body.

Only Erlendur, obsessed by the need to discover the truth about those who have lost their way, is driven to pursue his own investigations.

Arnaldur Indridason is a historian, former journalist and film critic, and internationally acclaimed author of the "Nordic Noir" Inspector Erlendur series set in Iceland.

Click HERE to read an interview with author Arnaldur Indridason.

Click HERE to read the review in the New York Times.

Click HERE to read a review from the Crime Fiction Lover web site.  

Strange Shores by Arnaldur Indridason

Strange Shores: An Inspector Erlendur Novel by Arnaldur Indridason --- 296 pages

Arnaldur Indridason is perhaps the best known of Icelandic mystery author of "Nordic Noir" thrillers, with nine of his twelve Inspector Erlendur books translated into English.

Erlendur is a misfit, a dour man whose entire life has been weighed down by guilt over the childhood death of his younger brother, who was lost on the high moors above their remote east Icelandic village during a sudden snowstorm. The two young boys had accompanied their father on a search for some of the family's sheep. All three had become separated from each other during the blizzard. Their father made it back home and raised the alarm; search parties found and rescued Erlendur; but young Beggi vanished, his body never found.

The tragedy destroyed the family. They abandoned the farm and moved to Reykjavik., where his father succumbed to depression. Eventually Erlendur found work as a police officer.

There's an underlying fatalism to all of Erlendur's cases;  many of the crimes he investigates have their roots in the past, when Iceland was a poor, insular country, life was hard and unforgiving, and domestic violence was often covered up. Yet Erlendur understands that kind of crime far better than the crimes of the "new" Iceland, connived at by shady developers and greedy financiers, drug dealers and sex traffickers.  

In Indridason's last novel, Black Skies, Erlendur was referred to but never appeared; he was said to be on leave and visiting his old family croft at Bakkasel. In Strange Shores we read the story of Erlendur's visit there, once again wandering the moors searching for expiation from his guilt.

There he meets an old hunter and hears again the stories of other lives lost during past storms; one, in particular, catches his interest, because it happened very close in time to the loss of his brother.  A young married woman left her home one morning to walk over the mountain pass to visit her mother in the next village; a sudden storm came down on the mountains and she too was never found.

A few years later, the tragedy was completed when her husband, who never remarried, was drowned in a storm while working on a fishing boat. But his body at least was recovered and laid to rest in his village graveyard.

The story catches Erlendur's attention. Even though it all happened more than forty years ago, in his usual obsessive way, Erlendur begins making inquiries, piecing together accounts of what occurred, tracing family members and anyone yet alive who knew the people involved and might still remember details of these events. And he begins to discover discrepancies, as he compares the various accounts, that lead him to suspect something quite different happened. That someone still alive is harboring a guilty secret that has wreaked his life, as Erlendur's guilt has worked on him.

A powerful tale of love and death, revenge and retribution, confession and absolution, very like the ancient Icelandic sagas.

Click HERE to read an interview with Arnaldur Indridason talking about Strange Shores.

Black Skies by Arnaldur Indridason

Black Skies: An Inspector Erlendur Novel by Arnaldur Indridason; translated from the Iclandic by Victoria Cribb --- 330 pages

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.

Outrage by Arnaldur Indridason

Outrage: An Inspector Erlendur Novel by Arnaldur Indridason; translated from the Icelandic by Anna Yates --- 281 pages

This is the eighth and latest mystery in the series about an Icelandic homicide detective. However in this book Inspector Erlendur is offstage. He's taken a leave of absence to travel to the East Fjords, leaving his assistant, Elinborg, in charge. Elinborg suspects he is dealing with some old personal business; she hasn't inquired too closely because she knows Erlendur to be close-mouthed in the old Icelandic fashion about such things, and she respects that.

In his absence, Elinborg is handed a difficult and disturbing case, involving the murder of a man whom she quickly comes to suspect was a serial rapist who stalked single women, drugged them so they could neither resist nor remember their attacker, and then brutally raped them. With patience and persistence, Elinborg manages to develop evidence that confirms the murdered man's nasty proclivities; but tragically, it appears that he was killed by one of his victims. All that remains is to gain a confession from the suspect, and Elinborg will get all the credit for solving the case.

But in the course of her investigation, Elinborg visited the rapist's childhood home in an isolated rural village, and discovered an old unsolved case of a young girl who went missing from that village. She's convinced there's a connection. The villagers are sullen and uncooperative; they try to discourage Elinborg but that just makes her even more persistent. In the end she uncovers the truth and learns there are some wrongs that can never be righted. Indridason, like Stieg Larsson, Karin Fossum and others, writes in the popular thriller genre called Nordic Noir.