Rating: 4 stars
Nowhere Books 2025 Bingo: A book in translation
Hildur Rúnarsdóttir is a police investigator on Iceland's harsh and rather sparsely populated west coast. When she was only a child, her two younger sisters disappeared without a trace, and now she's the head of the division for missing children in her part of the country. Her only remaining relative is her aunt, who she eats dinner with every Monday. Her aunt raised her after her parents died in a car accident about a year after her sisters went missing. Hildur surfs in the cold Atlantic Ocean to clear her mind of worries. She has a 'friends with benefits' relationship with one of her neighbours, but neither wants to make it anything official.
Jakob Johanson is a police trainee from Finland, who always wanted to visit Iceland and has therefore decided to complete his mandatory training period there. In Norway, he has a five-year-old son that his ex-wife refuses to let him have any contact with. He knits to relieve stress and loves the chance to design knitting projects with unusual Icelandic yarns. He and Hildur complement each other well as partners, but Jakob is frustrated that there are parts of the job he has difficulties with since he can't speak Icelandic yet and not all of the locals speak English.
Murders are rare in Iceland, so when Hildur and Jakob find themselves investigating the murder of an elderly local pedophile, they are surprised to find that it may be connected to the murder of a wealthy lawyer in Reykjavik. The two men seem to have absolutely nothing in common, but there is a strange calling card left with both of the bodies. The body of the old man was found in the ruins of a cabin crushed by an avalanche, while the security cameras in the parking garage where the lawyer was repeatedly run over by his own car were offline at the time of the murder. The killer seems to be meticulous and careful to not leave any traces. Then there is a third murder, and this time, the victim is someone with a direct connection to Hildur herself.
I put myself on the waiting list at my local library for this book, after reading this article about the author in the Guardian. It turns out that only the first novel of her bestselling series is available in Norwegian so far, with no clear sign of when the next books will be translated. In English, this book is called The Clues in the Fjord (which is a strange title, as there are absolutely no clues to any of the murders found in or around any of Iceland's many fjords. I guess it makes it more authentically Icelandic to use the word fjord in the title?) and books 2 and 3 should be out in English throughout 2025. So if I can't read them in Norwegian, I can always check out the English translations.
I don't think I've read any books set in Iceland since I studied various Norse sagas for my Master's thesis at University more than 25 years ago. These books are apparently massive bestsellers in the author's native Finland (she has lived in Iceland for more than 20 years, the books are set close to where she lives). The publishing rights have been sold to more than 17 countries, and I doubt I would have heard of her if it wasn't for the Guardian article.
Apparently, these books fit into a genre called "Nordic blue", which differs from the already popular "Nordic noir" in that the books focus not only on the crimes committed and the whys and wherefores but also on the lives and worries of the people investigating the crimes. It's as concerned with the social aspects of the crimes as the psychological.
I used to love reading crime novels, especially by several prominent Norwegian authors (although not Jo Nesbø, those never worked for me). As a teenager, I absolutely devoured everything I could find by Agatha Christie. For the last twenty years or so, though, I have hardly ever read mysteries, with the exception of some historical series featuring strong-minded Victorian lady sleuths, and they are a lot closer to cosies than the gritty psychological crime dramas of Nordic noir writers. I did read the original Lisbeth Salander trilogy by Stieg Larsson (I refuse to acknowledge any of the cash-grab fan fic sequels published after his death), but I found them mostly unpleasant. So much violence, especially towards women.
So this was a nice change of pace for me. Without spoiling anything, it is clear that the disappearance of Hildur's six and eight-year-old sisters twenty-five years in the past is going to play an important role in the series going forward. Since I have become completely incapable of tolerating violence or harm happening to children since I had my own child, I hope there won't be explorations of anything too graphic, or I'm going to freak out. But I am very interested in reading future books.
Judging a book by its cover: The cover is fairly neutral, showing partially snow-clad hills in a striking landscape. The little red dots are nevertheless a hint that this is a crime novel, as my soon-to-be seven-year-old exclaimed: "That looks like blood, Mama." He's not wrong, it looks like blood spatter and gives you some idea of what you'll find in these pages.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
