Snowblind by Ragnar Jonasson

 Snowblind by Ragnar Jonasson – 310 p.

 

Fishing village (“the herring have all gone”) Siglufjordur, in northern Iceland, is definitely not where Ari Thor’s girlfriend wants to be, so he relocates there alone, taking his first real job since finishing police college. His boss insists that “nothing ever happens here”, and there is no need to lock doors. Then the biggest celebrity in town falls to his death, a woman is brutally attacked and left to freeze in a blizzard, and Ari Thor has a night-time intruder. He investigates these events while acutely feeling his status as the outsider cop in a claustrophobically small town, amplified by unrelenting snowstorms and being literally locked in by avalanches on the one route out of town. This series opener is an entertaining piece of Nordic noir. 

Hunting Game by Helene Tursten

Hunting Game: A Novel by Helene Tursten, translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlen --- 280 pages including Acknowledgements.

The first book in a new crime series by celebrated Swedish mystery writer Helene Tursten. Embla Nyström has overcome a troubled childhood and adolescence and has established a promising career for herself  as a detective police inspector in a special investigative mobile unit in Gothenburg, Sweden. She's a health fanatic and competitive welterweight boxer, and she loves the outdoors life.

As the story begins, Embla is taking a much-needed holiday from her high-stress job to participate in a moose hunt with family and old friends in a beautiful but isolated rural retreat. It's something that Embla looks forward to every year, a chance to reconnect with her roots. But this year the equilibrium of the long-established hunting group is disturbed by the addition of a new member, a very attractive  but mysterious young man named Peter Hansson, who has just inherited a farm in the area.

Embla finds herself strongly attracted to Peter one moment and put off by his abrupt moods the next. The longtime leader of the hunting group, Sixten Svensson, seems to have taken an immediate and visceral dislike to Peter, but Embla knows that Sixten had long harbored hopes of buying the land Peter inherited to add to his own holdings.

When the hunt begins, at first it seems like everyone has settled down and Embla begins to relax and enjoy herself. However, the good mood doesn't last long.  A series of unsettling incidents leaves Embla wondering if someone has a grudge against the members of the hunting party. But when two of the hunters abruptly disappear overnight, the situation turns into something far worse. Embla takes charge of the search, and it doesn't take long to discover the body of one of the missing men, floating in the icy waters of a nearby lake. The other missing man seems to have vanished into thin air.  Soon the rest of Embla's investigative team arrives to assist in the search, and slowly a series of enigmatic clues are discovered that suggest someone is exacting vengeance for a dark deed buried in the past. Can Embla put the pieces together and discover the truth?

A classic whodunit with a thoroughly modern female detective who has her own ghosts to face down as she pursues her investigation.  Tursten is also the author of the popular Irene Huss mystery series, which was turned into an equally popular television serial in her native Sweden. 

Click HERE to read the review from the Crime by the Book Blog.

Click HERE to read the * review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Journal of Books.

Click HERE to read the review from Booklist Online. 

The Reckoning by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

The Reckoning: a Thriller by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir; translated from the icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 375 paes including Pronunciation Guide; Book 2 in The Children's House Series.

Yrsa Sigurdardottir, winner of the 2015 Petrona Award for best Scandinavian Crime Novel, delivers another mesmerizing crime thriller in her new Children's House Series, which pairs the socially inept Huldar, a detective in the Reykjavík CID with Freyja, a psychologist who treats traumatized children at The Children's House, investigating crimes involving children. 

This partnership is fraught with tensions because  Huldar and Freyja have an awkward personal history that makes it difficult for them to work together at critical moments in the investigation. The story picks up shortly after the conclusion of the first book in the series, The Legacy. Reading the books in order isn't necessary to understand the plot, but is necessary to fully grasp the relationship between Huldar and Freyja.

Ten years ago a local school had a time capsule project, and the students all wrote letters predicting the future and put them into the capsule.  Now the school has dug up the capsule, and one of the  letters predicts six people will die. The problem is, the letter is unsigned, and the six people are listed only by initials. 

It's probably just some kind of adolescent prank, but Huldar is assigned to evaluate the potential threat. Huldar suspects he's been given the job just to keep him busy so he can't screw up another major case like he did the last one. But it's an excuse to call Freyja, and try again to ingratiate himself with her. 

However the case takes a sudden dark turn when a series of horrifying events culminate in the savage murder of a retired prosecutor whose initials match one set of initials in the time capsule note. And this is just the start of a series of attacks that seem to be triggered by the release from prison of a paedophile who raped and murdered a young girl from that same school twelve years ago.

Huldar and Freyja realize they only have a short time to discover what links all of these events together in order to find the killers and stop them.

This is an expertly plotted and paced psychological thriller, and a furious indictment of any society that tolerates those who use their privilege and power to abuse the innocent. 

Click HERE to read the * review in Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from the Crime by the Book blog.

Rupture by Ragnar Jónasson

Rupture: An Ari Thor Thriller by Ragnar Jónasson; translated from the Icelandic by Quentin Bates --- 246 pages including Author's Note, Pronunciation Guide, maps, and Acknowledgements. Book 4 in the Dark Iceland Series.

The residents of Siglufjörður are in a panic because a traveler has brought haemorrhagic fever to their small community. The man dies; but then others in the town fall ill. There are more deaths; the town is quarantined and the residents are ordered to stay isolated in their homes for the duration. Local police officer Ari Thor is one of the few people who are allowed to go out; mostly to insure the quarantine is maintained.

Other than that, he has little to do but brood, so when he is contacted by Hedinn, a man with some questions about an old and mysterious family photograph, he welcomes the distraction. 

Meanwhile Isrun, a television reporter in Reykjavik, is looking for a big story that can advance her career. When a young child is kidnapped from his pram, Isrun thinks she's found her story: the boy friend of the child's mother has drawn the attention of the police. Then, in what seems at first like an unrelated incident, a politician's son is killed by a hit and run driver.

What links these two different plot lines is the motive: retribution. In both cases, old betrayals have festered and burst into cold, deliberate acts of revenge.

Jonasson combines intricate plots and evocative language to create an intensity that catches the reader imagination and will not let go. Piece by piece he drops his clues and challenges you to put them together before the final revelation. 

A classic murder mystery with a Nordic Noir twist, and perfect for a cold winter night's  entertainment.  Jonasson is the third of the new Icelandic trilogy of Nordic Noir, along with Arnaldur Indridason and Yrsa Sigurdardóttir.

The Dark Iceland series in order: Snowblind, Nightblind, Blackout, Rupture.

Click HERE to read the review from The Crime Review.com.

Click HERE to read the review from Novel Gossip.com.

Click HERE to read the review from Crime by the Book.com.

The Legacy by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

The Legacy: A Thriller by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 455 pages

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir is the current queen of Icelandic crime fiction, with a number of books to her credit.  The Legacy is the first book in a projected new "Children's House" series that will explore the unlikely partnership of Freyja, a psychologist who works with severely traumatized children, and newly promoted homicide detective Huldar.

Freyja and Huldar must (reluctantly) work together on a particularly horrific series of murders because the only witness they have is a seven-year-old girl who was hiding under the bed in the room when her mother was killed.  Freyja dislikes the police in general and Huldar in particular, but has to cooperate in order to protect little Magrét from the intense pressure of the investigation.

Meanwhile, Karl, a lonely young man living in his deceased mother's house, is getting strange numerically-coded messages on short wave radio that seem to be aimed specifically at him. It takes a long time for Karl to figure out the key to the numbers and decode them, but the cryptic messages that result only frighten and confuse him further.

The only thing that is certain is that the killer, whoever he is, holds a violent grudge against his victims, yet they seem to be chosen at random. If he can only discover what connects the victims, Huldar is certain he could identify the killer. But will he make the connection before the killer strikes again?

Nordic Noir to rival the darkest and most tangled tales of the Icelandic sagas.

Click HERE to read the * review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from the Criminal Element blog.

Click HERE to read the review from theartsdesk.com.

The Darkness by Ragnar Jonasson

The Darkness: A Thriller by Ragnar Jónasson; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 310 pages

A gripping new thriller by the author of the celebrated "Dark Iceland" series. This is the first volume in a new trilogy called "Hidden Iceland," and Jónasson is upping the ante by choosing to write the  three volumes in reverse chronological order.

The body of a young woman, a Russian asylum-seeker, is discovered by hikers washed up in an isolated little cove, halfway between Reykjavik and Keflavik.  After a cursory investigation by the Reykjavik police, the death is declared a suicide, and the case closed.

Over a year later Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir of the Reykjavík police has just learned that she is being forced into early retirement at 64, to make room for a new hire, a much younger and less experienced man. Hulda is furious; she has been dreading compulsory retirement at age sixty-five, and now she is being forced out a year sooner. But before she leaves she bargains with her boss for two more weeks to clear her desk and a chance to solve a one last cold case of her choosing. Hulda knows which case: the Russian woman whose hope for asylum ended in the icy waters. Soon Hulda discovers that another Russian emigre vanished at about the same time, and that no one seems concerned or even interested. Even the other detectives in her division seem more determined to discourage and obstruct her efforts to reopen the investigation. Meanwhile the clock is ticking.

It's rare to find a woman in her sixties featured as the protagonist in a suspense thriller. Perhaps Jónasson  is being influenced by his background as the person who translated a number of Agatha Christie's classic mysteries into Icelandic. But his Hulda is not an Icelandic Miss Marple. Readers will find themselves rooting for Hulda as she battles the latent hostility and dismissive attitudes she has had to overcome as a woman in a male-dominated field. 

As in Jónasson's other books, the Icelandic landscape is an ever present "character" lurking throughout The Darkness. Readers will experience both Iceland's compelling beauty and its unforgiving nature.

In the "Nordic Noir" tradition, the plotting is precise, winding tighter and tighter as the suspense rachets up to a bleakly ironic conclusion. Only when looking backward can the reader see the tragic inevitability of a web so expertly woven to deceive. 

Click HERE to read an interview with the author from the Reykjavik Grapevine.

Click HERE to read the *review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from the Washington (DC) Times.

The Fire Pit by Chris Ould

The Fire Pit by Chris Ould --- 461 pages

Faroese detective Hjalti Hentze is initially called out  to deal with an apparent suicide at Muli on the island of Eysturoy, but his case morphs into something far more serious when the skeleton of a woman is discovered half dug up from under a stone walled sheepfold nearby. Hentze finds old records indicating that a Norwegian woman and her young daughter had been  reported missing 40 years ago from a notorious commune at Muli, run by a Danish man, Rasmus Matzen, on land owned by the dead man, Boas Justesen.

Nobody mourns Justesen's death, but some still remember his fascination with the Danish hippies who briefly occupied Muli in the 1970s, so Hentze decides to do some digging into the past, even though the local force is short on manpower and money after recent events (related in a previous book, The Killing Bay).

Meanwhile British homicide investigator Jan Reyna is still looking for answers for his mother’s suicide in 1976. Lydia Reyna had taken Jan and run away from her husband and her life on the Faroes, to Denmark. And there she had committed suicide, leaving four-year-old Jan alone in the flat. Although he has no recollection of what happened, and even though he was rescued and adopted by his mother's sister and her husband in England, it's clear that this early trauma has cast a profound shadow over Jan's life.

These two major subplots of the novel intertwine until the reader realizes that Reyna's personal quest and Hentze's investigation into the past are coalescing into a a single arc of horrific crimes spanning forty years. 

Chris Ould combines the psychological suspense of British thrillers with the spare narrative and atmospheric style of Nordic Noir. Reyna and Hentze are very different  in their approach to investigation, but those very differences make them better and stronger as partners in the search for truth and justice for the victims.

Ould has thoroughly researched the geography and history of the Faroes Islands All the locations, both Danish and Faroese, are vivid and tangible, grounding the novels with an authentic sense of place.  This would make a great series for Masterpiece Mystery.

The three books of the Faroes trilogy --- The Blood Strand, The Killing Bay, and The Fire Pit --- are best read in sequence as the story lines all overlap.  Ould says he is moving on to other projects now but hints that he may return to the Faroes at some future date.  May that time come soon!

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from Crimefictionlover.com

Click HERE to read a review from The Crime Review.com

The Killing Bay by Chris Ould

The Killing Bay: A Faroes Novel by Chris Ould --- 461 pages

The Killing Bay is the second book in a trilogy set in the Faroe Islands and picks up just a few weeks after the conclusion of  The Blood Strand, with British detective Jan Reyna recuperating from his injuries., and attending the funeral of his long-estranged father. His mother, who ran away from her husband taking young Jan with her, committed suicide when Jan was a child. He is visiting the islands for the first time --- an outsider attempting to reconnect with his family because he wants to know what really happened between his parents.

There are two main plot lines in this book.  One is Reyna’s search for information about the death of his mother.  He was always told it was a suicide, but has begun to question this.  Even though most people are unwilling to talk, he’s managed to pry loose a few bits and pieces of information that don't quite add up.

While Reyna is looking to the past, another story is unfolding in the present.  Activists have come to the Faroes to protest the traditional whale grind (hunt). Danish security forces descend on the islands. Shortly after a clash between the activists and the locals, one of the activists turns up dead.  Local detective Hjalti Hentze is called to the scene.  At first glance, it looks like the crime is linked to the whale protests. But Hentze is not convinced. The scene looks staged to him.

When a member of his own family becomes a suspect, Hentze is taken off the case.  At every turn it seems the murder investigation is being hindered by the security forces. Then some crucial evidence goes missing. Hentze is convinced that someone is trying to subvert the murder investigation – but why? He asks Reyna to help him find out what's really going on.

Another highly atmospheric police procedural and crime thriller.  Looking forward to the conclusion of the trilogy in The Fire Pit.

Click HERE to read the *review in Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from The Crime Review.com

Click HERE to read an interview with Chris Ould from Crime Fiction Lover.com

The Blood Strand by Chris Ould

The Blood Strand: A Faroes Novel by Chris Ould --- 435 pages

The first in a trio of crime novels by British author Chris Ould set in the Faroes Islands, an archipelago located about 200 miles north/northwest of Scotland, between Norway and Iceland. The Faroes today are part of Denmark. The population of about 80,000 people speak Faroese, a language descended from Old Norse. The islands are spectacularly scenic, and provide a brooding atmosphere for Ould's tale.

His mother took Jan Reyna away from his home in the Faroe Islands as a very young child, and then committed suicide, leaving Jan to be raised by her sister and her sister's husband in England.  Not surprisingly then Reyna thinks of himself as British, not Faroese. He doesn't speak the language, even though his aunt and uncle speak it.  Now a grown man and a homicide detective, Reyna knows almost nothing about his father, but has many unanswered questions about his mother. When he finally decides to return to the islands Reyna discovers that his estranged father has just suffered a major stroke under suspicious circumstances. He meets the Faroese police inspector investigating the case, Hjalti Hentze, and gradually becomes involved, only to finds himself learning more about his long-lost family’s secrets than he may want to know.

For fans of Nordic Noir and police procedurals, this is the start of a great series.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus.

Click HERE to read the review from blogcritics.org

Nightblind by Ragnar Jonasson

Nightblind: A Thriller by Ragnar Jonasson; translated from the Icelandic by Quentin Bates --- 210 pages including Author's Note.

Book 2 in the Dark Iceland Series. Ari Thór Arason is a policeman in the far northern village of Siglufjordur. Once the village was prosperous, in the days when the locals could make a good living fishing and processing herring. But the herring have long since disappeared from the seas off Siglufjordur. A new tunnel and highway under the looming mountains means the village is no longer cut off from the rest of Iceland (at least, not during the short summer season), so the villagers are hoping summer tourists will revitalize the local economy. Ari Thor is an outsider, shut out of the ties that bind the villagers together, but he cannot help but be aware of the simmering tensions beneath the surface. The villagers like to boast that no one locks their doors in Siglufjordur --- but Ari Thor knows better.

Then the seeming peace is shattered by murder. Ari Thor's boss, Inspector Herjolfur, is lured to a derelict house, ambushed and left to die in pouring rain in the dead of night. Suddenly all Iceland's attention is focused on Siglufjordur. As the arctic winter closes in, Ari Thor pursues a murderer through the maze of local politics, illicit drugs, deep-buried family secrets, and victims driven to kill their tormenters.

Another tour de force from a formidable new talent.

Click HERE to read Jonasson discussing the background of his novels and his family connection to the village of Siglufjordur in an essay published by the Irish Times.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Mystery Tribune.

Click HERE to read the review from The Crime Review.

Snowblind by Ragnar Jonasson

Snowblind: A Thriller by Ragnar Jonasson; translated from the Icelandic by Quetin Bates

Snowblind is the first book in the Dark Iceland series of crime thrillers by a talented new author.   Jonasson, an attorney  and literary enthusiast, writes classic, intricately plotted mysteries with a minimalist Nordic Noir vibe. That's not surprising for a writer who cites Christie (he's translated fourteen of her books into Icelandic) and P.D.James as major influences. Jonasson combines this with firsthand knowledge and family connections to the brooding isolation of rural Iceland in winter. As the snows come howling and the sun disappears for months on end, a small fishing village fallen on hard times becomes a locked room where rookie police officer Ari Thor Arason is trapped along with all his suspects when what seemed an accident morphs relentlessly into murder.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from the UK Independent. 

The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indridason

The Shadow District: a Thriller by Arnaldur Indridason; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 344 pages

Indridason, an internationally best-selling author of "Nordic Noir" crime thrillers, starts a new series, projected to be a trilogy, set during the American occupation of Iceland in World War II.  

His two detectives are Stephan Thorson (or Thódarson ) a Canadian Army investigator working as a liaison officer with a Reykjavik police detective called Flóvent. It's the bitterly cold winter of 1944 when they are assigned to investigate the death of a young woman found strangled in an alley behind the National Theatre, in an area known as the Shadow District. The case was never satisfactorily resolved.

Over sixty years later, an elderly pensioner living alone in a tiny flat in Reykjavik, is found dead on his bed, after a worried neighbor calls the police and asks them to check on him.  At first the assumption is that he died in his sleep of natural causes. But an autopsy proves otherwise.  A retired police detective named Kónrad who volunteers to work on cold cases for something to do, offers to follow up when the initial investigation turns up nothing.  Soon  Kónrad discovers some intriguing connections between the death of the old man and the unsolved crime from the war years, and realizes that to solve the present day crime he must finally discover the truth of the old crime.

Indridason is a master of his craft.  The second volume in the trilogy, The Shadow Killer, is due out next summer. Highly recommended.

Click HERE to read an interview with the author, Arnaldur Indridason, talking about his new series, from Crime Fiction Lover.com

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers' Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

 

The Thirst by Jo Nesbo

The Thirst: A New Harry Hole Novel by Jo Nesbǿ; translated from the Norwegian by Neil Smith --- 462 pages

The eleventh in Nesbǿ's series of police thrillers featuring his obsessive, alcoholic, self-destructive detective Harry Hole, is another tightly wrought tale of obsession and vengeance.

Harry has a new life now with the woman he loves; a new job as an instructor at the police college, training young police officers; he's climbed out of the wreckage he'd made of his life and found a fragile, precarious happiness. 

But unfortunately, a serial murderer has begun targeting women who use an online dating service called Tinder to meet men. But the killer has more in mind than just murder; he's using his victims to attract attention. And Harry begins to suspect it's his attention the killer is seeking. 

Nesbǿ is one of the best known and most popular writers of Nordic Noir. 

Click HERE to read the review in Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to watch an interview with Nesbǿ on Youtube.

Click HERE to read an interview with Nesbǿ from the UK Independent.

Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbø

Midnight Sun: A Novel by Jo Nesbø. Translated from the Norwegian by Neil Smith --- 273 pages

A novel to pair with Nesbø's previous Blood on Snow, another quiet but tightly wound tale of a man on the run from retribution. The time is the 1970s. Ulf, a small time dope dealer in Oslo becomes --- unwillingly --- the "fixer" for the Fisherman, Oslo's drug kingpin. Which is a cruel joke of fate, because Ulf is not a killer, but he is hapless and much too frightened to tell the Fisherman the truth.  And he needs money badly, a great deal of money, so he agrees and hopes for the best.

But when push comes to shove, Ulf can't close the deal. The first time he's told to kill a dealer who's gotten behind in his payments to the Fisherman, he lets the target get away in exchange for money. Ironically the money comes too late for his need.

When the Fisherman finds out he's been doublecrossed, Ulf runs, to the far north, to the Finnmark, where he meets a young woman and her curious son, and finds feelings he thought were dead coming back to haunt him.

But the Fisherman is still to be reckoned with; sooner or later, his hit men will find Ulf under the pitiless glare of the midnight sun. So this time can Ulf find redemption, or is this just another cruel joke played by that bastard hope?

As a young man Nesbø lived for a time in the Finnmark, and he captures the starkness of the land, the implacable light, and the harsh creed of the Læstadian church. 

Click HERE for a review from the Los Angeles Times.

Click HERE for a review from the Washington Post.

Click HERE for a Youtube video of Jo Nesbø describing Midnight Sun.

 

Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø

Blood on Snow: A Novel by JoNesbø; translated from the Norwegian by Neil Smith --- 208 pages

In this novella by the author of the Harry Hole police thrillers, Nesbø takes as his unlikely hero a "fixer" named Olaf. Olaf became a "fixer" (a contract killer) because, he tells us, he failed miserably as a getaway driver, a pimp and a drug dealer. But he's very good at killing people, mostly because he can work alone and at his own pace. 

But now he's been ordered to fix his mobster boss's beautiful, unfaithful wife. Olaf is leery of doing this job, because it will mean he has a hold over his boss. That will make the boss anxious; and who's to say he won't decide to relieve that anxiety by getting rid of Olaf?

Olaf is the narrator of the story, so we see things from his point of view --- which may or may not be entirely reliable. Reportedly the book has already been optioned as a vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio, and the strong visual elements and escalating tension seem ready made for film. (Although DiCaprio would not be my choice for the lead.)

If you haven't read Nesbø before, this would be an intriguing introduction to his brand of  Nordic Noir. It's short enough to read in one sitting, and compulsive enough to make that likely. I certainly couldn't put it down.

Click HERE to read a review from The Guardian.

Click HERE to listen to a review on NPR.

Click HERE to read an opposing viewpoint from the New York Times.

Click HERE to read a review from the Boston Globe.