Arnaldur Indridason is the king of Icelandic literature, continually topping the bestseller lists. His 14 novels starring Inspector Erlendur are highly recommended, and deserve to be more well known. Focusing mostly on character, his crime novels offer more than a who-done-it or procedural, and I'm happy to have collected that series in hardcover.
The Darkness Knows introduces a new series with Inspector Konrad, a retired detective. When tourists discover a body frozen in time on a melting glacier above Rekjavik, an unsolved cold case is reignited. Konrad (the investigating detective at the time) receives a call from the pathologist Svanhildur, an old friend of many years, telling him Sigurvin has been found perfectly preserved after thirty years, and he is drawn back to the puzzle he could never solve. The man just disappeared, his car found in another location. The only clues: an offroad vehicle seen that night by a young man (now deceased) and a witnessed fight with his business partner Hjaltalin, who despite claiming his innocence has been hounded all these years as the culprit. It's a hard place to start as Sigurvin was a vile swindler and Hjaltalin is a pathological liar. Konrad begins to unofficially reinvestigate with the begrudged blessing of Marta, an old colleague now Chief Inspector at Reykjavik CID.
The young man (now deceased) who saw that vehicle has a sister still haunted by his death, still seeking answers, and asks Konrad to see if the crimes are related.
As Konrad finds there may have been corruption in the case at the time, he is haunted by the fate of his father, a cop himself during the war in the area known as the Shadow District. Troublesome, making many enemies, he was known as a real bastard and was killed outside an abbatoir in 1963. Konrad returns to the old district, now replaced by high rises, and meets again Eyglo, the daughter of a psychic Konrad's father blackmailed into fraudulent spiritual scams to bilk people of money.
30 years is a long time, and the strongest lead remaining seems a man in a bar whom no one remembers seeing, name unknown. There is not much to go on, but Konrad has time, and there are some things he can't let go of so easily.
These are just a few of the plotlines Indridason expertly weaves through the novel with his original spare style. What I love about his writing is the pace, we learn about the characters in small doses at the right time. Konrad has a wife Erna, who is mentioned sparingly but the full story is told slowly in a natural way. He makes each character enigmatic. There are witnesses who come forward with information, and later we learn quite differently from the other side of the story. His novels are very involving, and always enjoyable.
This Konrad series continues in The Girl By The Bridge, and four others which have not been translated yet. His other translated series (besides Inspector Erlendur) is The Shadow District and The Shadow Killer, the Reykjavik Wartime Mystery series.
2017 / Tradeback / 338 pages
Comentários