The Darkness and Our House

The Darkness by Ragnar Jonasson

I love the Nordic Noir genre of novels and Iceland, a country I have visited, provides perfect settings for crime thrillers.

A young woman is found dead on a remote Icelandic beach. She came looking for safety but instead she found a watery graave. A hasty police investigation determines her death as suicide. When Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir of the Reykjavik police is forced into early retirement, she is told she can investigate one last cold case of her choice - and she knows which one. 

What she discovers is far darker than suicide . . . And no one is telling Hulda the whole story.

When her own colleagues try to put the brakes on her investigation, Hulda has just days to discover the truth. A truth she will risk her own life to find.

A neatly plotted thriller with a striking end.  Read more about this book and the author in a review written by a fellow fan of Nordic Noir:

https://www.on-magazine.co.uk/arts/book-review/crime/the-darkness-ragnar-jonasson/

Our House by Louise Candlish

Suggested by Liz of Splinter this turned out to be an archetypal page-turner, and much more.

On a bright morning in the London suburbs, you see a family move into the house they’ve just bought on Trinity Avenue.  Nothing strange about that. Except it's your house. And you didn’t sell it.  

Amazon says:

When Fi Lawson arrives home to find strangers moving into her house, she is plunged into confusion. She and her husband Bram have owned their home on Trinity Avenue for years and have no intention of selling. How can this other family possibly think the house is theirs? And why has Bram disappeared when she needs him most?  Unable to see his wife, his children or his home, he has nothing left but to settle scores. As the nightmare takes grip, both Bram and Fi try to make sense of the events that led to a devastating crime. What has he hidden from her – and what has she hidden from him? And will either survive the chilling truth – that there are far worse things you can lose than your house? 

What I thought:

It is a bit of a nightmare scenario, I think any house-owning reader will relate to that.A day and a half in bed nursing some sort of virus enabled me to read Our House pretty much from cover to cover because this was a page-turner where you would promise to finish at the end of the chapter and then think, I’ll just read one more……

The plot is ingenious and I’m not sure there is another novel in this genre which comes close to matching the series of events that leads up to the moment when Fi arrives home to find her home is no longer her own. 

The plot is plausible with twists and turns which never stray beyond the realms of the believable and the coincidental.  It hinges around the arrogance of a man who thinks he can ignore a driving ban and continue to drive with excess alcohol in his system to boot.  One cover up leads to another and in the end Bram and Fi are both guilty of believing they can get away with ‘murder’.

Bram makes that initial mistake which will have such unfolding and catastrophic consequences and he must then pay the price.  So, the irony in the final paragraph……. Bram still goes on thinking he can make it right and in doing so seals his wife’s fate. 

A true page-turner and I would not be surprised to see it made into a film.

The Leopard

The Leopard by Jo Nesbo

Jo Nesbo is a Norwegian writer, musician, and former economist and reporter. As of March 2014, more than 3 million copies of his novels have been sold in Norway, and his work has been translated into over 40 languages, selling 30 million copies worldwide.  He is known primarily for his crime novels featuring Inspector Harry Hole.

Following the traumatic Snowman case,  a forerunning novel featuring police inspector Harry Hole, Hole  has exiled himself in Hong Kong. Kaja Solness, a new Norwegian Crime Squad officer, tracks down Hole and asks for his help investigating possible serial killings in Oslo. Hole is convinced to return when told that his father, Olav, is seriously ill and will not live much longer. Hole returns to Norway to find that the Crime Squad is in the middle of a power struggle with Kripos and its power-hungry head, Mikael Bellman, who seeks to puts his agency in sole charge of the country's murder cases. Hole finds himself the target of Bellman's hostility, though Bellman is keen to take credit for the result of Hole's work. 

Goodreads says:
In the depths of winter, a killer stalks the city streets. His victims are two young women, both found with twenty-four inexplicable puncture wounds, both drowned in their own blood. The crime scenes offer no clues, the media is reaching fever pitch, and the police are running out of options. There is only one man who can help them, and he doesn't want to be found. Deeply traumatised by The Snowman investigation, which threatened the lives of those he holds most dear, Inspector Harry Hole has lost himself in the squalor of Hong Kong's opium dens. But with his father seriously ill in hospital, Harry reluctantly agrees to return to Oslo. He has no intention of working on the case, but his instinct takes over when a third victim is found brutally murdered in a city park.

The victims appear completely unconnected to one another, but it's not long before Harry makes a discovery: the women all spent the night in an isolated mountain hostel. And someone is picking off the guests one by one. A heart-stopping thriller from the bestselling author of the The Snowman, The Leopard is an international phenomenon that will grip you until the final page.  

Compared to the other novels in the series, The Leopard has a more cinematic and action-oriented style, taking place across three continents. The Leopard also contains excessive violence. Nesbø has expressed regret for a couple of scenes in the book.  

What I thought:
As with the Nordic Noir genre of tv series, I enjoy crime thriller literature located in Scandinavian settings.  The chill and dark of the northern landscape and the gritty temperaments of the characters in those landscapes add to the brooding atmosphere in which the detective action takes place.  The Leopard is a fat paperback, some 600 pages in length, and I did find the novel was a shade longer than it needed to be with one or two red herrings leading to false endings as bit by bit all possible candidates for the killer were dangled in front of the reader and then ruled out.  All the same it was a good read and at the time of reading, the violence in the narrative did not particularly strike me as more excessive than that which I have come to expect of a Nesbo crime novel.

The First Three Titles: Martin Beck

Martin Beck is a fictional Swedish police detective who is the main character in a series of ten novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö collectively titled The Story of a Crime. The stories are frequently referred to as the Martin Beck stories. All of the novels have been adapted to films between 1967 and 1994, six of which featured Gösta Ekman as Martin Beck. Between 1997 and 2018 there have also been 38 films (some only broadcast on television) based on the characters, with Peter Haber as Martin Beck.

I've read the first three volumes as follows:

Roseanna Book 1

Roseanna is the first book in the hugely acclaimed Martin Beck series: the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime fiction and influenced writers from Stieg Larrson to Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell to Lars Kepplar.

On a July afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from a lake in southern Sweden. Raped and murdered, she is naked, unmarked and carries no sign of her identity. As Detective Inspector Martin Beck slowly begins to make the connections that will bring her identity to light, he uncovers a series of crimes further reaching than he ever would have imagined and a killer far more dangerous. How much will Beck be prepared to risk to catch him?

The Man Who Went Up In Smoke Book 2
The second book in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s - the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime writing.

Hugely acclaimed, the Martin Beck series were the original Scandinavian crime novels and have inspired the writings of Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbo. Written in the 1960s, 10 books completed in 10 years, they are the work of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo - a husband and wife team from Sweden. They follow the fortunes of the detective Martin Beck, whose enigmatic, taciturn character has inspired countless other policemen in crime fiction; without his creation Ian Rankin's John Rebus or Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander may never have been conceived. The novels can be read separately, but are best read in chronological order, so the reader can follow the characters' development and get drawn into the series as a whole. 'The Man Who Went Up in Smoke' starts as Martin Beck has just begun his holiday: an August spent with his family on a small island off the coast of Sweden. But when a neighbour gets a phone call, Beck finds himself packed off to Budapest, where a boorish journalist has vanished without a trace. Instead of passing leisurely sun-filled days with his children, Beck must troll about in the Eastern Europe underworld for a man nobody knows, with the aid of the coolly efficient local police, who do business while soaking at the public baths - and at the risk of vanishing along with his quarry.

The Man on the Balcony

Published in 1967 this third instalment sees a newly promoted Detective Superintendent Martin Beck setting a much darker tone than previous books.

The opening description of a nondescript, forty-year old man sitting on his apartment balcony and watching Stockholm waking up brings shivers to the spine as the traffic builds and children make their way to school feeling fairly ambivalent about the whole scene playing out under his watchful eye.

Tempers amongst the police force are frayed as a serious of vicious mugging on pensioners at the city parks is running riot, with the eighth occurrence in the last two weeks and no closer to finding the perpetrator. This man who is charged with tackling this one man crime wave is Detective Inspector Gunvald Larsson who comments that "if someone doesn't grab him soon" the perpetrator could end up taking a life. That "someone" being either the police or a civil patrol, and Larsson seems largely indifferent to just whom it is, one of many times that society seems to sympathise with vigilante action in this novel. On the night of the eighth mugging an altogether more sinister horror awaits, as the body of a young girl who has been the victim of sexual interference and assault is found dead. Jaded before even beginning the investigation, Kollberg is faced with breaking the news to the mother of the child, just as his own wife is due to give birth. When a second girl is discovered under similar circumstances it takes a tip off to bring the mugger into the police fold and establish that he has seen the murderer. Along with a three-year-old boy who is also believed to have witnessed the murderer, the details they provide bring a flash of inspiration from Martin Beck.

My thoughts:

These were 3 easy reads, not long or overly convoluted but straightforward crime detective narratives.  Written in the 60s the accessories of detection and sources available to the police which we take for granted today: the internet, databases of personal information, previous criminal history, mobiles phones and DNA techniques inevitably lead to plots which are less convoluted and the methods employed by the police are less sophisticated and immediate - for example mobile phone communication between detecting personnel which accelerates the action.  In some ways this lack of sophistication and technology adds to the tension and the reader is drawn to keep turning the pages, and delaying the moment when the book must be put aside in favour of a more pressing  task.  These are books to take on a 'plane, or on a beach.

O is for Icelandic nOir - 7 and 11

Two titles in the Detective Erlendur Sveinsson series by the popular Icelandic writer, Arnarldur Indridason.

Outrage

He offered her another margarita, and, as he returned from the bar, he carefully slid the pill into her glass. They were getting along fine, and he was sure she would give him no trouble...

Then 48 hours later a young man is found dead in a pool of blood. There is no sign of a break-in at his flat. The victim is found wearing a woman's t-shirt, while a bottle of Rohypnol lies on the table nearby.

Detective Elinborg, already struggling to juggle family life and the relentless demands of her job, is assigned the case. But with no immediate leads to the killer, can she piece together details of the victim's secret life and solve a brutal murder?

Oblivion

A woman swims in a remote, milky-blue lagoon. Steam rises from the water and as it clears, a body is revealed in the ghostly light.

Miles away, a vast aircraft hangar rises behind the perimeter fence of the US military base. A sickening thud is heard as a man’s body falls from a high platform.

Many years before, a schoolgirl went missing. The world has forgotten her. But Erlendur has not.

Erlendur Sveinsson is a newly promoted detective with a battered body, a rogue CIA operative and America’s troublesome presence in Iceland to contend with. In his spare time he investigates a cold case. He is only starting out but he is already up to his neck.

Indridason's signature is to run two threads that need solving in the same title. 

Tenebrae criminibus

Five titles which reveal the emphasis I have placed on choosing crime reading.  When my life is taken up with a rolling programme of visitors and visiting, with all the supporting fielding activities that such a life entails, in order not to lose my personal plot, crime and detective novels which necessitate sustained reading sessions where the urge to page-turn is strong are welcome opportunities to switch off from all the practicalities of life and relax with an engaging read.  And, often,  to fall asleep...........

Let's start in the frozen North.  Snowblind (Dark Iceland Series) by Ragnar Jonasson is set in Siglufjorour: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, accessible only via a small mountain tunnel, is where no one locks their doors. Snowblind is an impressive debut from a new talent.

Enter Ari Thor Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik - with a past that he's unable to leave behind. When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theatre, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one, and secrets and lies are a way of life. An avalanche and unremitting snowstorms close the mountain pass, and the 24-hour darkness threatens to push Ari over the edge, as curtains begin to twitch, and his investigation becomes increasingly complex, chilling and personal. Past plays tag with the present and the claustrophobic tension mounts, while Ari is thrust ever deeper into his own darkness - blinded by snow, and with a killer on the loose. Taut and gripping,

I listened to Snowblind on Audible and it was read by an Icelandic actor, Thor Kristjansson.  Whilst using a native affords verisimilitude to a reading of the novel, I found the heavy Icelandic accent often distorted the pronunciation of the English translation and was a distraction to concentration.

In contrast I read Arctic Chill (Reykjavik Murder Mysteries) by Arnaldur Indridason in hard copy.  A dark-skinned young boy is found dead, frozen to the ground in a pool of his own blood.

The boy's Thai half-brother is missing; is he implicated, or simply afraid for his own life? While fears increase that the murder could have been racially motivated, the police receive reports that a suspected paedophile has been spotted in the area.  Detective Erlendur's investigation soon unearths the tension simmering beneath the surface of Iceland's outwardly liberal, multi-cultural society while the murder forces Erlendur to confront the tragedy in his own past. 

Racial tension was to me a surprising theme to crop up in an Icelandic crime novel.  Preoccupied, as we are in the UK, with the extreme racism as well as xenophobia which has manifested since the result of the EU referendum, and aware these are issues that prevail in our immediate European neighbours such as France, I had not expected that this sociopolitical problem had extended its nasty tendrils as far as an apparently tolerant and liberal nation such as Iceland.

Freeze Frame (The Enzo Files) by Peter May implies another novel set in the chilly North.  In fact, the setting for this novel in the Enzo Macleod series is a small island off the Breton coast.  A promise made to a dying man leads Enzo Macleod, a Scot forensic expert who's been teaching in France for many years, to the study which the man's heir has preserved for nearly twenty years.

The dead man left several clues for his son there, designed to reveal the killer's identity but ironically the son died soon after the father. This opens the fourth of seven cold cases which have been written up in a bestselling book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin.  Enzo has rashly boasted that he could solve these cold cases and he has been successful with the first three.

On the tiny Breton island Enzo must confront the hostility of locals who have no desire to see the infamous murder back in the headlines. There are possible suspects and the crime scene is frozen in time.  A dangerous hell hole (Trou d'Enfer) up on the cliffs and a collection of enigmatic messages as clues, add to the gripping narrative.  There are red herrings along the way, the solution is satisfying and it makes for an enjoyable read.  .

Mo Hayder can always be expected to grip her reader and turn out a crime thriller which breaks out of the traditional mould of plotting. As a crime writer she is fast-paced and addictive; Hanging Hill centres around a pair of estranged sisters—one a cop, one a coddled wife fallen on hard times—and the gruesome homicide of a teenage beauty, which exposes the nightmares that lurk at the edges of our safe domestic lives.

One morning in picture-perfect Bath, England, a teenage girl’s body is found on the towpath of a canal. Hanging Hill is a much better than average thriller with a masterful twist in the ending.  Always a bonus.

Why was she on the towpath alone late at night? Zoe Benedict—Harley-riding police detective, independent to a fault—is convinced the department head needs to look beyond the usual domestic motives to solve the case, but no one wants to hear it. Meanwhile, Zoe’s sister, Sally—recently divorced and in dire financial straits, supporting a daughter who was friends with the dead girl—has begun working as a housekeeper for a rich entrepreneur who seems less eccentric and more repugnant, and possibly dangerous. When Zoe’s investigation turns up evidence that the teenage girl's attempts to break into modeling had delivered her into the world of webcam girls and amateur porn, a crippling secret from Zoe’s emerges.  All roads seem to be leading to one conclusion: there’s something very wrong at the house on Hanging Hill. But will Zoe and Sally put their differences aside and fit all the pieces together before it’s too late?

Often one saves the best till last.  Not in this case though.  I was given a copy of Silken Prey (John Sandford) by an American friend who found he had two copies.

  All hell has broken loose in the Washington. An influential state senator has been caught with something very, very nasty on his office computer. The governor find this incredible.  In his view the senator is too smart to be caught out like that. It does not make sense.  As Davenport investigates, the trail leads to a political fixer who has disappeared, then—troublingly—to the Minneapolis police department itself, and most unsettling of all, to a woman who could give Machiavelli lessons in manipulation. She has very definite ideas about the way the world should work—along with the money, ruthlessness, and cold-blooded will to make it happen.

This is one in the Lucas Davenport series and the author is talked up as a writer with "trademark razor-sharp plotting and some of the best characters in suspense fiction."  I didn't find that a convincing opinion.  There are more than twenty titles in the 'Prey' series but I am not tempted to tackle another.

Dark Things in the Night and the Arctic Cold

So I press on with my Read Harder Challenge.  One item on the list is:

'Read a book with a main character that has a mental illness'

The Bird of Night by Susan Hill fulfils this category very well.  It also ticks a box on my Booker Shortlist Personal Challenge.  It is a bleak read and not a long one.  Unfortunately the author commented in 2006 "It is a novel of mine that was shortlisted for Booker and won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction. It was a book I have never rated. I don't think it works, though there are a few good things in it. I don't believe in the characters or the story.  

Hill is known for her gothic style and penchant for a ghost story several of which she wrote in the 80s and early 90s.  Her 21st century novels are, in one way, lighter being thrillers written around her detective character, Simon Serrailler.  In terms of writing they are rather lightweight when compared to, for example, The Bird of Night.  But she has captured an audience with Simon Serrailler and this sells books and pays bill!

Moving swiftly on therefore I come to three detective novels written by Icelandic authors.  Two, by Arnaldur Indridason, are part of a crime fiction series written around the character Inspector Erlendur.

Strange Shores and Hypothermia are full of Icelandic atmosphere.  Having recently renewed my acquaintance with Iceland in general and Reykjavik in particular and rekindled my enjoyment of everything the country has to offer,
and given my fondness for a good thriller, these are books to enjoy for their page-turning qualities added to which there is an ongoing story surrounding
Erlendur and his early life, during which he experiences the death of his younger brother, in circumstances the nature of which he has not been able to establish. 

Another Icelandic writer, Ragnar Jonasson has also captured my attention.  His output is not quite so prolific but he is the author of the Dark Iceland series in which there are only two titles published so far but three further novels planned according to his website.  I've read Night Blind and I now need to retrace steps and read the first title, Snow Blind.   As with Indridason we are in the realms of Icelandic noir, atmospheric with good characterisation and plotting.  The tension sucks you into a claustrophobic story whose main protagonist is a novice police detective Ari Thor.  The peace of a close-knit Icelandic community is shattered by the murder of a policeman - shot at point-blank range in the dead of night in a deserted house. With a killer on the loose and the dark Arctic waters closing in, it falls to Ari Thor to piece together a puzzle that involves tangled local politics, a compromised new mayor and a psychiatric ward in Reykjavik where someone is being held against their will...