Reading Matters

'Arctic Chill' by Arnaldur Indriðason

Fiction - paperback; Harvill Secker; 352 pages; 2008. Translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder and Victoria Cribb.

This is the fifth book in Arnaldur Indriðason's police procedural series set in Reykjavík that has been translated into English. As usual it stars the morose detective Erlendur and his colleagues, Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg, and revolves around two separate investigations -- the murder of a young Thai boy and the disappearance of a married woman.

The first (and main) storyline poses a shocking question up front: was the murder of Elias, the schoolboy, found dead from a knife wound, racially motivated? As the police officers make their inquiries they uncover racial tensions within the local school community -- one teacher holds strong views about immigration, for instance, and immigrant pupils are rumoured to be ostracized and bullied by their Icelandic counterparts -- which belies Iceland as a cosy, welcoming and liberal nation.

But there are other possibilities too: a suspected paedophile has been spotted in the area and may be responsible. Or was it Elias' older brother, Niran, who has gone into hiding? And what about Elias' mother, a Thai divorcee, who is rumoured to have a secret lover -- could he be the murderer?

I'm obviously not going to give the plot away, suffice to say that over the course of some 350 pages Erlundur and his co-horts dig around every conceivable lead, uncovering the odd red herring or two, which makes for an exciting read.

The second narrative thread, in which a husband reports his second wife's disappearance, takes a back seat to the murder investigation, but it adds an additional layer of interest and ratchets up the excitement level by a notch or two.

Despite the cracking storylines, I found this book slightly wearisome. I'm beginning to think I may have just read one too many in this series, because the back story associated with Erlundur's troubled past -- the death of his younger brother when he was a child, his marriage split, his daughter's drug addiction -- was so familiar to me. Of course, Indriðason has to work these references in for the benefit of first-time readers, so he's forgiven, but it does wear thin if you've read the four preceding novels, even with the slight character development that's apparent. 

Still, if you're looking for a crime novel that's easy to read, entertaining and has a social conscience, this will tick all the required boxes.

'The Draining Lake' by Arnaldur Indriðason

  Fiction - paperback; Harvill Secker; 312  pages; 2007. Translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder.

Icelandic journalist turned crime writer Arnaldur Indriðason became a firm favourite of mine when I read his brilliant novel Tainted Blood (also known as Jar City) back in 2006. The book was a refreshing change to the normal formulaic crime books I'd read in the past, and the setting -- the Icelandic capital Reykjavik -- added an "exotic" touch.

Of course there has been somewhat of an explosion in Scandinavian crime fiction since then, but it is Indriðason to whom I feel most loyal. Indeed, I have made a point of buying each new novel as it has been released, and The Draining Lake was no exception, although it did languish in my reading queue for about six months.

This is the fourth Reykjavik murder mystery -- starring the grumpy but troubled detective Erlunder -- to be translated into English. It is typical Indriðason fare but for some reason I didn't find the story as gripping as the others that preceded it.

As usual, the crime being investigated is an old one -- in this case a half-buried skeleton found in a lake after it drained as the result of an earthquake. The skull has been caved in and the bones weighted down by a Russian radio device. Forensics believe the skeleton to have lain in its position for 40 or 50 years.

The police, under the direction of Erlunder, begin their investigation by looking at missing person files.

Intertwined with this relatively straightforward police procedural narrative is a second storyline involving a group of Icelandic students studying at a German university during the Cold War. It is clear that one of these students is the skeleton that turns up Lake Kleifarvatn, so half the fun for the reader is trying to guess which one. But Indriðason plays his cards close to his chest and clues are few and far between.

While I found large parts of The Draining Lake rather dull -- perhaps a product of my circumstances, rather than of the author's work (I'm living out of a suitcase while my flat is being renovated) or the fact that anything to do with the Cold War usually leaves me, well, cold -- I did very much enjoy how Indriðason had moved the characters on from the last book. Erlunder is still struggling to maintain a steady relationship with his drug-addicted daughter while his long lost son returns to the fold. And the budding romance that began with a female biotechnician in Voices also takes a new turn.

Other familiar characters have also been nicely developed -- Elinborg is promoting a cook book, while Sigurdur Oli is dealing with a bereaved husband whose wife and child were killed in a traffic accident. It's also refreshing to have the story set in an Icelandic summer, when the sun never sets, instead of the cold, dark, snowy Reykjavik that has appeared in previous books in this series.

But on the whole I did not feel The Draining Lake was up to Indriðason's usual high standards -- although I'll still be the first in the queue to buy the next one!

'Voices' by Arnaldur Indriðason

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 344  pages; 2007. Translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder.

Voices is the third Arnaldur Indriðason book to be translated into English featuring the troubled detective Erlunder. Set in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, it's a powerful police procedural that pulls no punches in its depiction of a sordid crime and its aftermath.

The story opens with the murder of a hotel doorman in the room in which he has lived for the past 20 years.

The man was sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall. He was wearing a bright red Santa suit and still had the Santa cap on his head, but it had slipped down over his eyes. A large artificial Santa beard hid his face. He had undone the thick belt around his waist and unbuttoned his jacket. Beneath it he was wearing only a white vest. There was a fatal wound to his heart. Although there were other wounds on the body, the stabbing through the heart had finished him off. His hands had slash marks on them, as if he had tried to fight off the assailant. His trousers were down round his ankles. A condom hung from his penis.

Erlunder, together with the help of his two colleagues, Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg, immediately launches an investigation into the crime, but this is hindered on two fronts: first, no-one seems to know much about the victim despite the fact he had worked at the hotel for so long; and second, the manager wants the crime to be hushed up to save the hotel's reputation and to "avoid arousing fear among the guests". This is all complicated by the time of year: it's Christmas and the hotel is packed with rich foreigners "most of them tourists wearing traditional Icelandic sweaters, hiking boots and thick winter clothing".

The investigation takes place over five days (each of the days is a section of the novel) during which Erlunder holes up in the hotel, taking a room in which the radiator does not work, in order to thoroughly immerse himself in finding out what happened. But this also allows him to avoid the pain of spending another Christmas at home alone with his wayward daughter, Eva Lind, a recovering drug addict.
This lends the book an especially claustrophobic atmosphere, because the world outside barely intrudes on the hotel, its secretive staff, the guests -- one of whom is under suspicion -- and the piecing together of clues.

But the Santa murder is not the only narrative thread in this wholly gripping novel. In a second, interwoven storyline, Elinborg pursues a case in which a young boy is hospitalised after he was beaten up by school bullies. She firmly believes the father is the culprit and does all she can to prove her theory.

Meanwhile Erlunder slowly patches up his relationship with his daughter, revealing some of his inner demons -- specifically the grief surrounding the death of his younger brother when Erlunder was 10 -- for the first time. He also warms towards a female biotechnician helping out on the case and allows himself to go on a proper date, the first since he divorced his wife 25 years ago!

These additional elements do not, however, detract from the heart of the story. If anything, they enhance it, because it gives Indriðason the chance to really flesh out his characters, to explore their own troubles and heartaches, to make them more three-dimensional and real. To achieve this without sacrificing plot or narrative drive is quite an achievement.

It's also quite an achievement to write a novel with three diverse storylines centred on one theme -- the death of childhood -- without knocking the reader over the head with it. And to neatly tie up everything at the end and to present a solution to the crime that had not once occurred to me (I usually guess these things long before the last page), also says a lot about the author's talent as a crime writer.

On the whole Voices is a gripping read, intelligently written and plotted, that is emotional without resorting to sentiment or reader manipulation, and is satisfying without being formulaic or predictable. More please.

'Never Let Me Go' by Kazuo Ishiguro

 Fiction - hardcover; Faber and Faber; 263 pages; 2005.

How do I review this book? I finished reading it about a month ago, but every time I try to write about it, I find myself unable to articulate my thoughts. It hasn't helped that one particular Observer journalist declared that no one would care that Never Let Me Go had been on my TBR-list for a year or that I'd bought it as part of a discounted set of Booker novels!! (She was actually wrong, because 12 of you did care enough to leave comments!) As much as I hate to admit it, this made it more difficult to write a review that wasn't influenced by the whole negativity of this experience...

...which isn't entirely a bad thing, because with the passing of time I've been able to mull over what I really thought of the story and, quite frankly, it made me revise my star-rating down from a four-star review to a three-star review. I thoroughly enjoyed the book as I was reading it. It evoked a kind of creepy ambiance that stayed with me throughout the several days that it took me to complete the book.

However, because of the profound nature of the story, I expected it to have an impact that would last long after I reached the last page, but instead I found myself frustrated by it: there were so many unanswered questions, so many loose ends that hadn't been tied up, so many gaps that I wanted filled. Perhaps it's the journalist in me, but I wanted to grab Ishiguro by the throat and scream, "why didn't those children fight back? Why did you made them so insipid?"

The story is narrated by Kathy, an adult looking back on her idealised childhood where she, along with a group of other select children, attended Hailsham, an upmarket boarding school in the British countryside. Although it is never spelt out -- Ishiguro keeps his cards close to his chest throughout the entire novel -- the children are clones bred for future organ donation.

Kathy, now a carer, looks after Hailsham graduates, including two of her classmates, as they go through organ donation procedures. These "graduates" don't just donate one-off organs, they come back repeatedly until, eventually, they "complete", an euphemism for die.

There's no real plot to speak of, other than Kathy recalling incidents from her past, which sounds a rather dull narrative device but works exceptionally well. This is because Ishiguro drip feeds information very slowly throughout the book, so that it is up to the reader to fill in the gaps. As you do so, the horror -- and the enormous sadness -- of the story begins to filter through. I found it to be a deeply disturbing and unsettling read, the mark of a strongly written story.

Ultimately Never Let Me Go belongs to the science fiction genre, even though it is set in modern times. It is quite reminiscent of the late John Wyndham's futuristic novels, but you definitely don't need to be a fan of science fiction to enjoy it. I liked it very much, but not enough to rave about it.

'Silence of the Grave' by Arnaldur Indriðason

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 304 pages; 2006. Translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder.

Erlunder, the morose but endearing detective first introduced to English-language readers in Tainted Blood, is hard at work solving yet another Reykjavík murder mystery.

This time a body has been found in a shallow grave in an area that once housed British and American military barracks during the Second World War. It is believed that the body could have laid there for decades. But is it male or female, and was it simply a case of someone going missing in the snow or is there a more sinister reason for the body laying where it has been found?

This is an intense, sparsely written crime thriller composed of two intertwined narratives: in the present, Erlunder's painstaking investigation interspersed with a painful personal situation in which his pregnant drug-addicted daughter lies in a coma; and in the past, a tragic story about a woman, subject to appalling domestic violence, whom may or may not be the victim in the grave.

The two stories are carefully constructed and inter cut with one another to build up a succession of clues which, for this reader anyway, were too glaringly obvious to create any real heart-hammering tension. I guessed the ending long before it was revealed.

That said, it's a well written, entirely believable, if somewhat harrowing book, and it provides enough twists and turns not to be wholly predictable. And, as ever, Indriðason provides an intriguing glimpse of Iceland's culture and history, which gives this book enough atmosphere to make up for any shortfall in my own expectations (I had, remember, fallen head over heels with Tainted Blood when I read it earlier this year and had expected to feel similiarly infatuated with Silence of the Grave, alas it was not to be so...).

The author won the CWA Gold Dagger for this book in 2005.

'Tainted Blood' by Arnaldur Indriðason

 

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 224  pages; 2005. Translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder.

I could probably review this book in one word - WOW! - but that wouldn't be fair, would it?

I could also review it in three words - I LOVED IT! - but that isn't fair either.

So let me say this. Tainted Blood is a taut, well-executed police procedural, set in grey, rainy Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. It grips from the first page, each sentence beautifully written, propelling the story forward without wasting one word.

The writing is sparse and elegant, but very visual. You can smell, feel, hear and SEE everything that Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson goes through as he investigates the murder of an old man with a sordid past.

The plot is calculating and well constructed, if a little predictable towards the end. But the beauty of this novel is the layering effect, of stories within stories, sad and melancholy as they may be. The parallel tale of Erlendur's complicated relationship with his drug-addicted older daughter only serves to add a rich depth to an already riveting crime thriller.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, turning the pages quicker than my eyes could hungrily devour them. I suspect it would make an excellent film, and I'd be surprised if the film rights haven't already been snapped up.

Tainted Blood won the Nordic Crime Novel Award and received much international acclaim - and with good reason. Now I am eager to read the follow up to this novel, Silence of the Grave, which has reaped similar plaudits.

So, if you're looking for a clever crime thriller set in an atmospheric location with interesting and complicated characters, a little bit of science, a lot of detective work and some unexpected twists and turns thrown in, then this book is hard to beat.

There. That was better than a one-word review, wasn't it?