Mystery, They Wrote – Arnaldur Indridason

As I sit writing this, the thermometer on my desk says it’s 5 degrees outside. Last night the wind chill dropped to -40 degrees. And I am just ending a reading blitz brought on by my recent discovery of Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason. Now, it would seem in the current climate I should be reading something set in a sunny and warm location like Hawaii, but no, I’m reading about murder on an island in the middle of the Atlantic. In the winter, yet.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve always been a bit put off by translations – the few I’ve read seemed awkward and stilted, the translation pulling me out of the story over and over again. So when someone in my mystery-reading group suggested Arnaldur Indridason, I smiled politely and changed the subject. I’m not sure what made me pick up Jar City, the first of Arnaldur’s books to be published in the US, but I’m sure glad I did.

There are three books in this series featuring Detective Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson and his colleagues, Detectives Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg – Jar City, Silence of the Grave and Voices – with the fourth, The Draining Lake, to be published in August. Erlendur is an older, experienced cop whose overall demeanor is dark and depressing. But he’s a brilliant detective who follows his gut as much as hard clues. Professionally, he’s hardly ever wrong, but his personal life is a disaster – his work is his life. He has a drug addicted daughter, a son he rarely sees, an ex-wife who after twenty-plus years still hates him, and dark secrets in his background. But this is definitely the guy you want on your side if you’re ever in trouble. Sigurdur Oli is the polar opposite – an inexperienced officer just a little too full of himself and his abilities, who spends his spare time trying to talk his girlfriend out of getting married (he’s losing the battle, by the way). Sigurdur Oli always looks for the obvious answer and never follows his gut – but then perhaps he doesn’t have one. The balancing force is Elinborg – we don’t know much about her yet, but she is definitely appreciative of Erlender’s skill, worries about his personal isolation, and has a tendency to take the edge off Sigurdur Oli. The three-some make a great team.

All three books take place in and around Reykjavik and you definitely get a feel for the gritty side of the place, both city and countryside. Even in the springtime, it’s dark, dreary, and raining most of the time. Perhaps all of this sounds a bit depressing and some parts of the books are difficult to read, but there are slender rays of hope throughout. The plots are intriguing and the characters more fully defined as their back-stories are slowly revealed.

Jar City opens with the discovery of an old man murdered in his Reykjavik flat. Pinned to his chest is a note – I AM HIM. Silence of the Grave moves the team to the countryside where a skeleton is unearthed on a construction site. Voices takes place during the weeks preceding Christmas in a popular Reykjavik hotel when Santa is found stabbed to death. There is one commonality between all three books – the solution to the current crime always has some relation to the past. I am particularly fond of this plot device and enjoyed the touch of Icelandic history. For instance, the British and US occupations of this tiny country during World War II play a part in Silence of the Grave.

Today, Iceland is still a small country with a population of only about 300,000. In the 1980s and 1990s, only two or three authors even attempted writing crime fiction. At the time their efforts were met with only mediocre attention. In an interview with Mystery News (Issue 24/6 December/January 2007), Indridason attributes that to two things: “One is that we were a very small isolated island in the middle of nowhere in the Atlantic Ocean, and people thought nothing much happened here to write crime novels about. We did not have very complicated crimes or interesting criminals. The other reason is the fact that writers didn’t look at crime novels as so-called real literature. Publishers didn’t either, and the readers didn’t and the critics didn’t.”

Ten years ago that began to change, led in part by Arnaldur Indridason. Today Arnaldur has a stack of international awards to his credit, including the much-coveted Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger Award for the top crime novel of the year (2005). And thanks to an increasing interest in international crime novels here in the US, we are able to read the translated work of this talented Icelandic author. So, even though there may be a foot of snow outside your window, I say light up that fireplace, gather the wooly blanket and a hot toddy, and explore the world of Icelandic crime with Erlender and his colleagues. After all, who really needs sunshine and sand?

Enjoy the mystery!