The Girl Who Died by Ragnar Jónasson

Published in Iceland in 2018; published in translation by Minotaur Books on May 4, 2021

Multiple mysteries intersect in The Girl Who Died. What happened to the little girl who seems to be haunting the house where Una is staying? What caused the death of another little girl decades later? Why is Thór, despite his obvious attraction to Una, resisting any kind of relationship with her? Why is a woman serving time in prison for a murder she didn’t commit? Why is an entire village lying about seeing a man who appeared in the village after he vanished from Reykjavik? Why does nearly everyone in the village want Una to leave?

Una begins the novel in Reykjavik, where circumstances have conspired to make her unhappy. A friend shows her a notice for a teaching position in the remote fishing village of Skálar. Una applies and, by virtue of being the only applicant, is hired. The village only has two children, two girls who are not far apart in age. As part of Una’s compensation, she’s given an attic room in the house where one of the girls lives with her mother.

Arriving at the village after a long day of driving, Una finds the place where she’ll be staying. (It’s the first house she sees, but there aren’t many houses in a village that only has about ten residents.) As she approaches the front door, Una sees a child dressed in white peering at her from the window. She assumes the child is Edda, the child who lives in the house, but when she introduces herself, Edda denies having seen her from the window. We later learn that the villagers regard the house as haunted by the spirit of a girl who died decades earlier under circumstances that nobody wants to share with Una.

Much of the story develops Una’s sense of being an outsider. Apart from Edda’s mother, who insisted that the two village children needed a proper education, nobody wants Una to stay. Una reacts to her ostracization by drinking a bottle of wine most nights, which the village gossips — meaning nearly every villager — soon notice. One of the few villagers who is friendly to Una is Thór, a single man who lives in a platonic relationship with a woman. He makes Una feel even more lonely by politely resisting her advances for reasons he refuses to disclose.

Against that background, a plot gains ground when a man appears in the village. He tells Una he is looking for a particular residence where he heard he might be able to rent a room for the night. Days later, after Una learns that someone resembling the man has been reported missing from Reykjavik, she wonders why everyone in the village is denying knowledge of the man’s existence.

Compounding the mystery are chapters told from the perspective of a young woman in prison. She and two other people were convicted of murdering two victims whose bodies were never found. She confessed to the crime after the police convinced her of her guilt, but she has no memory of committing the murder. The book is nearing its end before we learn how the apparently innocent woman fits in with the other plot elements.

The notice for the teaching job describes the village’s location as “the end of the world.” It seems that way to Una. Her sense of isolation, loneliness, and self-doubt is amplified by the bleakness of the landscape in which Ragnar Jónasson set the story. The atmosphere gives the novel an eerie feeling, while Una’s reaction to living at the end of the world makes her a sympathetic character.

The Girl Who Died blends a multifaceted mystery plot with elements of the supernatural. I’m not a big fan of the supernatural, but whether the ghost is real or the byproduct of Una’s anxiety, perhaps combined with her alcohol consumption, is ambiguous for much of the novel. The sense of living in a haunted place does add to Una’s distress, so the ghost, real or imagined, contributes to the story. A reader may need to suspend belief in the supernatural to appreciate the last brief chapters.

The story raises intriguing moral issues that I can’t discuss without revealing the novel’s secrets. Doing the right thing for one person will harm another person, creating the kind of a moral dilemma that makes the reader think about how the reader might respond to the same situation. Whether Una makes the right choice is certainly open to debate, but I regard that as a good thing. A surprising conclusion resolves the story elements in way that is true to the novel’s macabre tone. I’ve only read a few of Jónasson’s novels, but I’ve read enough to know that he’s a skilled mystery writer.

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Blackout by Ragnar Jónasson

Published in Iceland in 2011; published in translation by Minotaur Books on August 28, 2018

A tourist discovers a dead body in one of Iceland’s unpronounceable northern villages. The murder victim, Elías Freysson, was beaten to death with a board. It’s the kind of story that Ísrún would like to cover, but the Reykjavik newsroom only assigns her fluff. Her editor, in fact, fears that Ísrún might be promoted over his head. When Ísrún fights to cover the story, it is clear that she is pursuing a personal interest, but the reason for Ísrún’s intense desire to investigate the murder will not be revealed until the novel nears its end.

Why Freysson was murdered is revealed in flashbacks that develop his unhappy past. We also learn, rather quickly, that Freysson was connected to a young woman who has been brought to Iceland under false pretenses and who is now locked away. Yes, this is another human trafficking story, but the trafficking is a background element that doesn’t try to milk the hysteria that so many human trafficking thrillers depend upon.

Freysson had been working on a construction site in another unproduceable northern village, where Ari Thór Arason is trying to make a career with the police. Hlynur Ísaksson has more seniority than Arason, but the boss believes that Hlynur has lost his edge and assigns Ari Thór to find out what he can about Freysson. Hylnur has been receiving disturbing emails about his bullying past, a distraction from work that becomes an important subplot.

Learning who killed Freysson requires Ari Thór to figure out why he was killed. The reader soon suspects that Freysson was engaged in unlawful behavior and that others within his orbit may also be at risk. Ari Thór wonders if the murder was linked to a retired doctor whose alcoholism was responsible for three patient deaths. He also explores Freysson’s link to a man who was raised on the same abusive farm when Freysson was a child.

All of that gives the reader a good bit of substance to ponder as the story picks up steam. The various subplots give Ragnar Jónasson the opportunity to develop interesting (and usually tormented) secondary characters with nearly as much depth as he brings to the primary characters.

Ari Thór has a caustic personality that certainly doesn’t breed respect for the police. His personal problems stem from his broken relationship with the woman he left behind in Reykjavik, opening the door to another subplot that contributes to the action in the novel’s last chapters.

After developing characters and story threads, Ragnar Jónasson opens the throttle in the novel’s concluding chapters. This is Iceland, so there aren’t any mindless shootouts or the kind of fights that let dimwitted heroes with Special Forces training demonstrate their martial arts prowess. Rather, Jónasson demonstrates his ability to escalate tension without undue violence. The focus is on people and their emotions, not action, but that focus does not diminish the pace. Blackout is easy to recommend as a fine addition to the reader's shelf of Icelandic crime fiction.

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The Shadow Killer by Arnaldur Indriðason

Published in Iceland in 2015; published in translation by St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books on May 29, 2018

The Shadow Killer is the second (and, so far, the last) in the Flóvent and Thorson series, following The Shadow District. The story again takes place during World War II. The novel describes the first meeting of Icelander Flóvent and Canadian (of Icelandic parentage) Thorson, so the novel takes place before the events recounted in The Shadow District.

A dead body is found in the apartment of Felix Lundun. The deceased was shot in the head, execution style, and a swastika was marked on his forehead. Felix, a traveling salesman, seems to have disappeared. Flóvent, the only detective in Reykjavik’s Criminal Investigation Division during the war, wonders if he might have been killed by an American, given the relative inexperience that Icelanders have with execution-style murders. The bullet came from a Colt .45, the sidearm carried by American soldiers. Since an American soldier might be involved, Flóvent is teamed with Thorson, who works for the American military police.

Circumstantial evidence, including a cyanide pill, suggests that Felix might be a German spy. Iceland in 1940 was occupied by the British who were trying to keep it out of German hands, while Icelanders were trying to remain studiously neutral. Felix’s father is a Nazi sympathizer but somehow managed to avoid the British purge. His father’s brother claims to have abandoned his interest in the Nazis, while Felix himself is reputed to be an anti-Nazi communist. Thorson has heard a rumor that Churchill might drop in on Iceland, a visit that might be of interest to German spies, if any are lurking about.

Since Felix is the obvious suspect, the reader will immediately understand that he is innocent, at least of killing the man whose body was found in his apartment. Flóvent and Thorson take occasional beatings as they plod forward with their investigation forward. Eventually the plot addresses theories (popular at the time) that criminals share certain physiological features, leading Flóvent to investigate certain Nazi-inspired experiments that were rooted in those theories. Meanwhile, Thorson is investigating the woman who had been living with the murder victim, a two-timer named Vera who seems to have manipulated every man she ever met.

As was true in The Shadow District, the background to the story involves the relationship between Icelandic girls, who are excited to meet foreign soldiers and sailors, and the Morality Committee, comprised of older Icelandic adults who are inclined to lock up Icelandic girls in reform schools if they dare to fraternize with foreign members of the military. Nazi (or in this case, Icelandic Nazi) theories involving racial purity and Nordic/Viking ancestry also contribute to the novel’s background.

That background, in fact, is more interesting than the plot or the primary characters. Naughty Vera at least has a personality, while Thorson and Flóvent might as well be ice sculptures. Their detailed investigation is at times too detailed to make for a riveting story, although The Shadow Killer does allow the reader to join the investigators in puzzling over clues and pondering potential motives. The solution to the mystery comes as no surprise. The story too often drags to warrant a full recommendation, but the background is sufficiently interesting to warrant a guarded recommendation to fans of cold-weather fiction.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Hotel Silence by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

First published in Iceland in 2018; published in translation by Grove Atlantic/Black Cat on February 13, 2018

Here’s some good advice from Jónas’ mom: “Instead of putting an end to your existence, can’t you put an end to being you and just become someone else?” The question in Hotel Silence is whether Jónas will listen to his mother.

Jónas kept a diary of his sexual experiences. Reading it, he remembers how Gudrún told him that she was pregnant, a revelation that led to marriage. They named the baby Waterlily. Only later did Gudrún tell Jónas that she was pregnant by another man. Jónas and Gudrún have been divorced (and Jónas has been celibate) for eight years, but he has nevertheless had a water lily tattooed over his heart.

Jónas visits his mother regularly, but she doesn’t always remember the visits. He has become obsessed with celebrity suicides and is considering how to take his own life in a way that won’t burden Waterlily with his empty flesh.

Jónas decides to do the deed at Hotel Silence in a remote country that has been devastated by war. Iceland hasn’t had a war in centuries, leaving Jónas unprepared for a city where nearly all the stores are closed and the hotel clerk warns him of the places where land mines and unexploded bombs make walking treacherous. Fifi and his sister May are running the hotel by default, the owner having fled to a less dangerous place. The only other regular occupant is May’s son, who was born in the basement as bombs fell.

Jónas gives himself a week to live. He has taken a drill and some tools with him and finds himself making small repairs so that his room will be more comfortable, although (as he repeatedly tells May) he isn’t a carpenter or a plumber — his skill is furniture restoration. Eventually he’s pressed into making repairs elsewhere in the hotel, and later in other buildings. His neighbor asks him if he plans to fix the whole country with his little drill, but it seems obvious to the reader that Jónas is really trying to fix himself, to find a reason to live another day.

Despite his desire for death, Jónas repeatedly encounters people who are surrounded by death but persist in living. He realizes early on that “in the land of death there isn’t the same urgency to die.” The novel’s central question is whether and when Jónas will end his life. Will staying in a country that needs to reinvent itself inspire him to reinvent himself?

Hotel Silence is a rumination on war and ruin. At the same time, it’s a very personal story of a man who imagines himself ruined and his journey of rediscovery. Some of the themes might be obvious, particularly the importance of finding purpose in life as an incentive to keep living, but the more subtle theme involves the struggle to make sense of life when it doesn’t go the way one imagined it would. The juxtaposition of Jónas’ emotional suffering with the more intense suffering of women who lost everything in a war brings home the point that misfortune is arbitrary, that it is unrelated to one’s value as a person, and that persevering in the face of adversity is based on the power of hope for a better future, even if “better” is nothing more than making a connection with another person.

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir’s prose is effortless and economical. Her focus on a small, slice-of-life story makes it possible to illuminate big themes. As the title implies, this is a quiet story — the silence that follows a war, the voices that are not yet ready to speak — but the story suggests that “Silence saves the world.” I don’t know if that’s true, but the silence between sentences in this masterful story speaks volumes.

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The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indriðason

First published in Iceland in 2013; first published in translation in Great Britain in 2017; published by St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books on November 7, 2017

The Shadow District is the first installment in a series of crime novels by an Icelandic author, Arnaldur Indriðason, who is best known in English for his Detective Erlundson series. The Shadow District is constructed along familiar lines. It tells two parallel stories, one involving a crime investigation in the past, the other involving a renewed interest in the investigation in the present. Indriðason uses that framework to tell an intriguing story of a murder investigation gone wrong, a tragedy that destroys lives in both the past and present.

The story beings with a death of a 90-year-old man in his home in Reykjavik. He appears to have died of old age, but a police investigator isn’t so sure. She wonders why the old man had kept newspaper clippings about a 20-year-old woman whose dead body had been hidden in a pile of rubbish during World War II.

The investigator’s retired colleague, introduced only as Konrád, knows something about the 1944 murder because his con artist father was involved in a séance connected to the death that he remembers as being “disastrous.” The details of the séance are revealed slowly as the story progresses. The killing also makes Konrád think about his father’s unsolved murder.

The World War II story is told in flashbacks that reveal an interesting bit of Icelandic history. The murder victim’s body was discovered by a teenage girl who was secretly messing around with an American soldier, a circumstance so common that shocked Icelanders called it “the Situation” and formed a committee to do something about it. They apparently didn’t want pure Icelandic girls to be tainted by foul Americans. Many older Icelanders apparently viewed the United States (to quote our president) as a “shithole” country, while the younger generation of women were happy to meet men who seemed to offer more excitement than the local farm boys could muster.

Unfortunately for the girl who found the murder victim, her American suitor turned out to have a wife back home in Illinois. Suspicion soon focuses on whether an American might have killed the girl, but the investigation leads in many directions. The two investigators are an Icelandic detective named Flóvent and a Canadian military officer (who has Icelandic roots) named Thorson.

Icelandic folklore also plays an interesting role in the story. Flóvent and Thorson learn that the murder victim had been made pregnant by rape and that her rapist told her to blame the crime on the huldufólk, elves who live in the Icelandic woods. That causes the investigators to wonder whether the victim’s death might be related to the disappearance of another girl in a different part of the country three years earlier. After that woman was raped, she blamed her attack on the huldufólk.

As is common with police officers around the world, the two investigators build a theory on circumstantial evidence and at least one of them develops tunnel vision about proving the theory is correct. Many years later, in the novel’s present, that theory is questioned for reasons that bridge the present to the past.

Indriðason carefully weaves the investigations of the past and present deaths together, letting the reader piece together the clues and decide among the various suspects who may have killed the two women — assuming the huldufólk were not to blame. The story seems to build toward a logical conclusion, then takes a twist, something that all mystery fans appreciate.

Indriðason tells the story in clear prose and gives his characters enough personality to make them believable. The story’s use of Icelandic history and folklore also adds to its interest. But it’s the mystery and the challenge it presents to readers as they piece together clues that makes The Shadow District a promising start to this veteran writer’s new crime series.

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