Chill out this summer with this Icelandic thriller
The Scandinavian Noir movement keeps producing impressive authors.
Last year I found another writer from the region who was new to me.
Ragnar Jonasson got his start in the genre by translating 14 of Agatha Christie’s novels into Icelandic. Then he began writing his own stories.
The first book I read by Jonasson was “The Darkness.” It was also the debut book in his series which features Detective Inspector Hulda Hermansdottir of the Reykjavik Police. As that book opens Hulda is being put out to pasture. She’s had a long career as a homicide detective but despite that she is getting little respect from her boss as she nears retirement.
Her retirement date is set — in a few weeks her career investigating murders in a country that rarely has any will be over. Her boss suggests she should leave now — he wants to give her office to another detective.
She’s annoyed and insists she shall stay on until the official date of her retirement. Her boss reluctantly agrees then tells her not to bother looking into any active cases. He tells her to pull out a cold case from their files.
He assumes she won’t solve it. But she’s stubborn. The case she chooses wasn’t even classified as a homicide. It was filed away as an accidental drowning. Her retirement clock is ticking. She plunges into the case. As she is working to solve it we find out some things about her. Hulda’s husband died years ago. Their daughter is dead, too, by suicide.
I interviewed the author about “The Darkness.” I was intrigued he was starting a crime series as his detective was about to retire. I was wondering, how would this work? Jonasson explained that he had plotted these books out as a trilogy with two subsequent prequels. In the next book we would flash back to when Hulda was younger. In the final book she would be younger still.
The second book is “The Island” and the first half of it is set during the late 1980s. The second half of the book takes place 10 years later, in 1997. The book begins as a young couple arrive on a remote island.
The young man hikes to some thermal pools to savor the soothing waters. While he is gone someone is murdering his girlfriend. Who could have done such a thing? The island was uninhabited — it was difficult to get there.
Her father was convicted of the murder. Fast forward 10 years. Two men, two women, old friends, travel to a remote island to vacation together. One of the men is the brother of the woman who was murdered 10 years before.
One woman falls from a cliff. It appears to be suicide or perhaps a tragic accident? Hulda Hermansdottir arrives to look into it. When she learns that one of the men is the brother of that other murder victim and the son of her alleged killer her intuition buzzes. “The Island” is brilliantly plotted.