The Reckoning

The Reckoning by Yrsa Sigurdardottir 375 pages


Vaka is a young girl who is waiting on the school steps for her father to pick her up when she is approached by another girl from school who lives close by. Vaka asks the girl is she can call her father from the girl's house. That afternoon is the last time anyone sees Vaka.

This books was a bit too graphic for me.

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.