Reykjavík Nights – Arnaldur Indriðason

Early Erlendur. He’s a new traffic cop, working nights, which means his path crosses with drunken revellers and drivers, the down and out and desperate.

He’s met Halldóra, mother to be of his two children, but only towards the end of Reykjavík Nights is it revealed that they’ve been dating for over two years. It sounded more like two months.

We also see his first meetings with the mysterious Marion Briem.

Early Erlendur – he’s less taciturn, but still carrying the burden of his lost brother, which in part explains his interest and persistence in investigating the death of Hannibal, a tramp he’d befriended whilst working Reykjavík nights.

For context and more background on the Reykjavík / Erlendur mysteries, read Crime Fiction Lover’s A Guide to Arnaldur Indriðason’s Detective Erlendur.

Publisher page: Reykjavík Nights – Arnaldur Indriðason

Outrage – Arnaldur Indriðason

Erlendur is absent in this excursion into Icelandic-flavoured Scandi-Crime-Noir, leaving the focus on Elínborg as she investigates the murder of a young man – found in his flat in a pool of blood, his throat cut and wearing nothing but a woman’s T-shirt. The police investigation soon links date-rape drug Rohypnol to the killing. The mystery is who did it, and why.

Outrage takes us away from Reykjavík – we hear that Erlendur is on one of his periodic pilgrimages to the Eastern Fjords, and Elínborg’s investigations take her to the dead man’s home village, a flight away from the big city. It also takes us away from the male gaze – we follow Elínborg home where she copes with a moody teenage son, a gifted daughter, and a husband who is a hopeless cook (but does his fair share in the family and domestic front); we see her sensitive handling of rape victims and their families, and her more forceful questioning of suspects and others who might be able to help solve this murder mystery if only they would talk.

But come the end of the book, and the solving of the crime, the question still remains: who has best served the victims of rape?

For context and more background on the Reykjavík / Erlendur mysteries, read Crime Fiction Lover’s A Guide to Arnaldur Indriðason’s Detective Erlendur.

Publisher page: Outrage – Arnaldur Indriðason

Arctic Chill – Arnaldur Indriðason

Reykjavík is in the grip of the hard Icelandic winter, when the body of a 10 year old boy is found in a children’s park near to a block of flats in one of the city’s more run down areas. Born in Reykjavík to a Thai mother and Icelandic father, now divorced, Elías was stabbed on his way home from school.

Erlendur, Elínborg and Sigurður Óli try to work out the motive – a racist reaction to Iceland’s increasing multi-culturalism, or something else? Elías’ Thai half brother, Niran, is nowhere to be found.

And we learn a little more about Erlender’s childhood and the death of his brother. There are other deaths too.

In a similar way to Henning Mankell’s Wallander, Arnaldur Indriðason’s Reykjavík murder mystery series poses questions about modern society, through the particular lens of this remote island in the middle of the Arctic, settled by the Norse over a thousand year’s ago and with a very strong sense of its history and identity.

For context and more background on the Reykjavík / Erlendur mysteries, read Crime Fiction Lover’s A Guide to Arnaldur Indriðason’s Detective Erlendur.

Publisher page: Arctic Chill – Arnaldur Indriðason

Silence of the Grave – Arnaldur Indriðason

Another page turning Icelandic crime novel featuring complicated Detective Erlendur, juggling his his semi-estranged pregnant, drug addict daughter Eva Lind and fully estranged wife Halldóra on the one hand, and the discovery of a body buried in the hills above Reykjavík which are about to become the Millennium Quarter, the city’s latest housing development, on the other.

A novel about families, relationships and society’s reaction to domestic violence.

A plot so full of twists and turns you can’t be sure of where you’re going to end up until the very last page. Superb.

Publisher page: Silence of the Grave – Arnaldur Indriðason

For context and more background on the Reykjavík / Erlendur mysteries, read Crime Fiction Lover’s A Guide to Arnaldur Indriðason’s Detective Erlendur.

Northern exposureNicholas Wroe interviews Arnaldur Indridason, whose macabre thrillers, starring his ‘gloomy Scandinavian’ inspector Erlendur, are not only hugely popular in his native Iceland, but a growing global success (The Guardian, 17 June 2006)

Jar City – Arnaldur Indriðason

My first taste of Icelandic noir, as Detective Erlendur investigates the murder of an old man in the Norðurmýri area of Reykjavík and a runaway bride from Garðabær. Cryptic notes have been left at the murder scene and at the wedding.

A very handy note on Icelandic names at the start of the book explains Erlendur is his first name, and that Icelanders always address one another by their first names. Names, it seems, will be important indicators in this series.

Publisher page: Jar City – Arnaldur Indriðason

Film review by Jason Solomons, The Guardian (14 September 2008)

For context and more background on the Reykjavík / Erlendur mysteries, read Crime Fiction Lover’s A Guide to Arnaldur Indriðason’s Detective Erlendur.