This week’s top read

The Darkness by Ragnar Jonasson (Michael Joseph – Penguin imprint) $37

If you have ever doubted the appropriateness of the phrase ‘‘Nordic noir’’, The Darkness will dispel any hesitation.

Hulda Hermansdottir is a detective inspector in the Reykjavik police and is being forced into retirement a few months early in order to make way for a young ascendant star. Thus begins the depressing and aptly named book.

Hulda is essentially alone, her daughter and husband having died some years previously.

There are two glimmers of hope in her life. She is given a cold case on which to spend her final two weeks, involving the death of a young Russian asylum seeker. It had been summarily cast out as a suicide.

And Hulda is beginning to form a relationship with a retired, widowed doctor.

This is as good as it gets. The investigation is beset by difficulty and vagueness, any clarity being short-lived. Was human trafficking and prostitution involved or not? Were the police in the original investigation culpable?

And, above all, why is Hulda somewhat avoidant of commitment to the new relationship?

The lowering noir (even Huldas’s dead daughter had been called Dimma, which translates as ‘‘darkness’’) is set in the barren, near wasteland of Iceland outside the capital.

The atmosphere, both physical and social, becomes increasingly menacing and the reader knows that things will end badly. The way in which this inevitably happens (and how badly) is the strength of the book.

There are ever-darker surprises, culminating in a finish that leaves one with a highly disturbing image.

The Darkness is well spoken of by eminently readable crime writers such as Gregg Hurwitz and Simon Kernick. They were, I think, a little generous in this instance.

The book is not in their league, but it does add well enough to Nordic noir