Arnaldur Indridason - the last three mystery novels in the Erlendur series

   Detective Erlendur is a morose, quiet, determined detective in Iceland.  Over the series of novels featuring him, we have learned about the blizzard when he was a child that he and his brother got lost in.  Erlendur comes home, his brother never does.  From Jar City through to Hypothermia, we have watched the slow uncovering of Erlendur's grief and how this event shaped him.  He is unable to connect with anyone, though he is able to function enough to have relationships for a time - long enough to be married and produce two children before divorce, and later eventually another love affair with a woman in the later novels.  He is not overtly depressed, he is chronically depressed and withdrawn.   Every so often, goes back east on his own to see if he can find out what happened to his brother.  My review of Hypothermia is here.

In the last three novels, something different happens.  At the end of Hypothermia, Erlendur sets out to discover what happened to a woman who disappeared in a town very close to where he grew up.  It was decades before the blizzard that trapped him and his brother.  Disappearances haunt Erlendur, so when he goes, he doesn't really leave any message behind. His detectives know this is normal for him, so they don't think much of it, though as the second week progresses, they start to get worried.
                                               

 Outrage is the next book in the series, taking place during the week after he has left.  One of his detectives, Detective Elinborg, handles this case in his absence.

Outrage is a story about a dead man found in a pool of blood, in his own apartment.  Clues suggest he had had a woman over shortly before his death.  Elinborg is handed the case when her co-worker Sigurdur Oli says he is working on another case, and can't help her.  In Outrage we get to see Iceland, and the detectives, and the case, through Elinborg's eyes.  I really enjoyed getting to know her, and her family: her husband who is quiet, her two sons, and her brilliant young daughter.  Near the end of the book Valgedur, the woman Erlendur is involved with, calls her to ask if she has heard from Erlendur.  It's been almost two weeks, and she is worried.  Elinborg tells her not to worry, but of course they both do.

The mystery itself is good, though a little convoluted.  The killer is not easily apparent, and it is only due to Elinborg's instincts that the real killer is uncovered.  The best part of the mystery is Elinborg herself, and her family.  She loves to cook, and has written a cookbook about desserts that is successful.  Her children are interesting, as is her marriage.  I'd like to know more about her!  So I ended up really enjoying the book as a whole.
                                                                  
Black Skies, the next book, features Sigurdur Oli, the other detective in the pair that work under Erlendur.  He is working on a big case when Elinborg is handed the rape and death case, so he is unable and mostly unwilling to help her. It takes place during the same two week time period Outrage does.  Sigurdur Oli is very ambitious, very aware of his appearance, and as we discover in Black Skies, somewhat crooked.  I say somewhat because he makes a mistake and spends much of the book praying it won't be uncovered, because he knows the people involved in the crime, and should have recused himself from solving it.  They are in important positions, banking etc, and don't want the police involved.  Of course it is much more complicated than that, and before too long, Sigurdur Oli realizes he is trapped, and has been set up.  He can't tell anyone, without revealing his complicity in the investigation.   It's an interesting portrayal of one of the main characters, and makes for gripping reading.  Sigurdur Oli also has a partner he has broken up with, who  he comes to realize he still loves, but it is too late for them.  Black Skies is about errors of judgement, and the policeman who makes some of the worst ones.  The other principal crime is a horrific story of a murder with a leather mask with a spike in the middle of it.  Why it happened, falls in Sigurdur Oli to solve, and the story of what happens to the main character of this investigation has direct links to what is about to happen to Erlendur in the final book in the series.  Again, in Black Skies, there are a few references to Erlendur's mysterious trip to the east Fjords and whatever he is investigating there.

As with Elinborg in the previous book, we discover more about Sigurdur Oli and what his history is.  His parents are divorced, and in the book he learns his father is dying of cancer.   Even though Sigurdur Oli is vain, and self-centered, he has an appealing quality - he is smart, and he does learn from his mistakes ,though he learns the very hard way.  I really enjoyed Black Skies, as dark as the crimes are, it is gritty and realistic as it portrays the betrayal of innocents and all the costs to society when it can't protect the most innocent.
                                                                         
The final book in the series, Strange Shores, was published late last fall.  It features Erlendur, during the two weeks that the previous books take place.  This is what Erlendur was doing out east......he goes out there ostensibly to uncover what happened to a woman in January 1942.  Supposedly Mattildur had set out to visit her family over the mountain pass....only a blizzard came up, and she never made it.  At the same time, a troop of British soldiers had gone out for a walk, and gotten lost on the same moors.  Not all of the soldiers survive, but the ones who do, claim they never met Mattildur, though they would have been walking during the same time and should have crossed paths.  This is Erlendur's cover story, even to himself, about why he is there.  Because the little village he is visiting, is close by his old family home, that his family left after a few years after the blizzard and his brother's death.  They can't bear the memories, and abandon the house and farm.

Throughout the book, each chapter opens with a little bit about a man who is losing consciousness.  Near the end, I realized it was Erlendur.  How, and why?  Strange Shores is about the grief left behind for the survivors, and about how losing his brother in the blizzard shaped Erlendur.  We discover the truth he has hidden from himself, that he blames himself for his brother's death.  His brother wouldn't have been there if not for Erlendur.......and his parents are so caught up in grief, that he is never able to tell them, and be relieved of his guilt. He comes to see that his whole life, this is why he can't connect with people, why he is a loner, and why he is drawn to solving mysteries.  He has always hoped his brother somehow survived, or would be found.  Strange Shores is heart-breaking in the end. Erlendur can't escape his past, either, and he finally realizes that he doesn't want to.  There is a deep melancholy in this book, as Erlendur after painstaking detective work uncovers what happens to Matthildur. This mystery novel examines the grief that people carry after losing someone they love, and what happens when the loss is compounded by the unknowable:  when the loved one disappears, how can anyone move on?  That mystery means the loss can never be closed, it lingers on as days, months, years pass, waiting to find out what happened, to have a resolution of some kind.  In the end, the resolution that Erlendur finds might not be to every reader's taste, and indeed he does something before the ending that shocked me so much that I put the book down and exclaimed, "no way!" out loud!  What he does is so shocking to me, though I realized this shows his slow unravelling as he faces the memories of that blizzard that he has buried deeply in himself.  I went back to the book, prepared for what I knew was going to come, and hoping anyway it wouldn't.  It is an ending that fits Erlendur and his character, and leaves me so sad for him.

This is a mystery series with a character not like anyone out there.  I love the setting, Iceland with its long dark hours and history that shapes the island and people making a living on it.  The darkness of human character, emphasized because of the long winters, and bleakness of much of the landscape.  Erlendur is unforgettable, and thanks to Black Skies and Outrage, his detectives are much more clearly delineated for me now.  I highly recommend the whole series to mystery readers. 

Interviews with Arnaldur Indridason:
Telegraph (UK)

Other reviews
 Outrage
Kerry at Mysteries in Paradise

Black Skies
Kerry at Mysteries in Paradise

Strange Shores
Crime Fiction Lover
Raidergirl3 at An Adventure in Reading

Bury Your Dead - Louise Penny

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny is number 6 in the Armand Gamache mystery series.  It is also far and away the best one so far - I still have A Trick of the Light and The Beautiful Mystery to get to, both of which have won much acclaim and awards - A Trick of the Light won the Anthony Award in 2011.  Bury Your Dead won the Nero Award, the Anthony Award, the Agatha Award, Macavity Award, and the Canadian Arthur Ellis Award, all in 2010.  It deserved every one of them, too. It is an outstanding mystery, weaving it's way between historical Quebec City, modern day Three Pines, Samuel de Champlain, the English and French in Quebec City, and redemption.

 Much of the novel occurs in the deepest part of winter in Quebec City, in the deep freeze which descends on the city in February.  The Carnivale d'Hiver - Winter Carnival- plays a background role in the setting. The Winter Carnival is one of the biggest festivals in winter in Canada (and the US), drawing in tourists from all over the world to celebrate winter. In the midst of all this revelry, Armand Gamache gets up at 3:30 am, and wanders in the deep heart of the winter night, unable to rest.  He has come to Quebec City to heal, staying with his former mentor Emile from the Surete de Quebec, who has long been retired. Gamache cannot forgive himself for a mistake in judgement he made, a judgement that had terrible consequences for some of his team.  Much of the story is told in an unfolding chapter switching sequence, with Armand dipping back into painful memories, finding his way to the central image that has so devastated him. It's the way the mind works with something painful, and it is fascinating to watch him make his way back to and through the events.  He is trying to find some way to live with the memories. At the same time, this question of judgement has caused him to look back on the case he solved just previous to the events of this novel, in The Murder Stone, where Olivier from the Three Pines was discovered to be guilty of a terrible crime. He sets his second in command  Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who is also recovering in his way from the events that torment the Chief,  to discover if Olivier is innocent, if Gamache's team overlooked some evidence.  This is all because Olivier's partner Gabriel refuses to believe Olivier did it and sends a letter every day to Armand that says only, Why did he move the body?  This kind of faith also moves through this book - faith that people have to sustain them, faith in the face of adversity, faith that something can be found that is good and worth protecting.

This is a book about uncovering the evidence to lead to the truth, and about the dead.  How the dead are venerated, how they are kept alive in our memories, how they can shape a place and a time, and even a province - Samuel de Champlain was the discoverer and founder of Quebec City, helped by the aboriginal peoples in the area (the Huron mainly) to survive the first winters. While Gamache is recovering, a laughable mad man who is determined to find Champlain's body somewhere under the earth in Quebec City, is murdered. In the unlikeliest of places, in a hidden corner of the English community that still survives in Quebec City.  So  in order to find out who killed him and not set of hysteria and chaos in the media, Gamache is asked to lend unofficial assistance as he is there and can speak better English than the officers in the Quebec City police force investigating the crime do. Gamache is able to speak to the tiny English community where the murder took place.  The English in Quebec city are an endangered minority, and the book delves into some of the reasons why, dating back to the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, when Montcalm lost to Wolfe. Gamache wonders through the book, how did Montcalm feel, when the English did the impossible, the unexpected, and climbed the cliff walls to surround the much larger French army on the Plains?  When he sent for reinforcements, but they never came? While a small part of the novel, it is this interest in the history around him that makes this mystery stand out. Gamache ponders Wolfe, Montcalm, and how the battle was won and lost, and how the English came to rule Quebec City and Canada, against the odds. He compares the battle Montcalm lost, with the errors in judgement he made himself. How can he bury the dead if he can't forget what happened?  Much of this book is about characters who can't forget what happened, and how they have to learn to let go and bury their dead, or they get stuck and can't move into what is good in life. Powerful thoughts in this mystery.

This setting, in the heart of old Quebec City, where Samuel de Champlain is thought to be buried, where the battle of the Plains of Abraham was fought that decided the course of a country, is unique in major mysteries published. I can't think of another mystery that covers this kind of politics and history and murder, set in Canada.  It makes for fascinating reading - plus a bit of homesickness for me, for I spent three years as a teenager living in Quebec City, graduating from high school (secondary school in Quebec) there.  It is a beautiful city, and reading this book took me back to Winter Carnivals I had attended long ago, and the old walled city, and the Plains of Abraham, that my school bus drove by every day to and from our high school. I went to one of the three English high schools then in Quebec City.

 Bury Your Dead is a very good title for this book.  It's like a book of Gamache thinking over what happened to him, and this grief gives a kind of purity to his thoughts. We get a glimpse of how he thinks, and sees the world, and of what a kind, gentle, thoughtful man he is - and yet finds so difficult to forgive himself his failures.  There are all kinds of acts of faith in this book, from Renaud, the man digging for Champlain's burial place, to the faith of  Reine Marie and Emile in letting Armand have his space and heal at his own pace, to the Literary and Historical Society deep in the heart of the city, the last bastion of English language books and history that still survives, and the faith of the people who keep the library going against all odds. It's also the faith of Gabri in his partner, and the faith that Jean-Guy places in the Chief, that the whole team places in him.  And how Armand finds his way to peace so he can rejoin life again.  It's a  beautiful mystery,

I read this a few weeks ago, and I have not been able to forget it.  It is an outstanding mystery.  It is one of my books of the year, too, I know that already. 

Mystery reviews

At long last, here are some overdue book reviews.  Please don't let the fact I didn't post about them right away make it seem that they aren't good - each of these following mysteries I loved, and are very good.


Sworn to Silence - Linda Castillo - first in the Kate Burkholder series.  Kate is a police officer who returns to the Amish community of her childhood, invited by the city council (not Amish led) to be the police chief.  She hasn't been back since leaving as a teenager, turning her back on it after she survives the terror of being attacked by the serial killer named the Slaughterhouse Killer.  Shortly after she returns, a murder occurs, which mimics the way the victims of the Slaughterhouse Killer died many years ago. Kate is forced to confront her own memories, as well as her family, in solving this case, as she has to determine if there is a copy cat killer, or if the Slaughterhouse Killer has returned.

This was a fascinating mystery.  I really liked the character of Kate, I liked the police department in the tiny town she is police chief of, the depiction of  the Amish community, and the rogue FBI agent sent in to help.  John  Tomasetti, who has a tortured past of his own.  The mystery has lot of suspense, clues sprinkled through out, and a great pace.  It does have a weak ending, which was disappointing - for me, the killer didn't quite ring true, but this may be because it is her first book, as well as the debut of the series.

Kate herself is fascinating and complex, as is her background in the Amish community.  This book has really stayed with me ever since reading it.  The crimes are a bit graphic, but otherwise, this is a very good police procedural.  I will be reading more in the series.

I have Wendy at Musings of  a Literary Feline to thank for her review of Sworn to Silence, here. , which got me looking for the book.  Yaay Book bloggers!

One Good Turn - Kate Atkinson - 2nd in the Jackson Brodie series.  This takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, two years after he inherited the fortune in at the end of Case Histories, the first book in this series.  Jackson is still with Julia, the actress sister from Case Histories.  He has followed her up her because of a play she is appearing in.  It is quite amusing to see how having all that money has changed Jackson, and how it hasn't.  He still doesn't see his daughter very often.  He quit his job, so he is no longer a police detective, or anything official.  He is bored. So when he sees a crime on a side street during the Fringe Festival held in Edinburgh every year, he jumps in to help.  And lands himself in a complicated mystery case that is by turns funny and bittersweet. This was fun to read from beginning to end.  I really like the character of Jackson.  He is like a rumpled Peter Falk - he doesn't seem to be paying attention, he jumps off into tangents, yet he is kindly and sweet, and determined.  I am so glad there are at least two more in this series!  I really am enjoying how he gets what we all dream of, enough money to retire, and he's not happy because things aren't good with Julia as they could be, and he doesn't have enough contact with his daughter.  At his heart he is a simple man, and wise enough to know that the things that matter, money can't buy, even though money is often at the root of most of the cases he used to work on, as it is here in this mystery. Highly recommended.

Elly Griffiths:
The House at Sea End - Book 3
and
A Room Full of Bones - Book 4

I have become a huge fan of this series.  Ruth Galloway is the plus-size forensic archaeologist who features in this series.  She is such a fun character.  She is plus-sized, loves food, and like Jackson Brodie above, somewhat bittersweet in character. She doesn't suffer fools gladly, and in a moment of weakness in the first book in the series, a gripping and terrible mystery and death leave her vulnerable, and she sleeps with the very married DCI Harry Nelson of the nearby police force.  In an surprising turn of events, she discovers she is pregnant, and at the end of book 2, The Janus Stones, she gives birth to a baby girl.  The House at Sea End and A Room Full of Bones take place over the first year of baby Kate's life.  Nelson's wife does not know at first, and slowly guesses, until she realizes on her own the truth at the end of The House at Sea End.  A Room Full of Bones is about the fall out for all three, and baby Kate.

This is not a series about a soap opera, however.  This all plays out in the background of the story, in each book, and for me it deepens the story.  It gives me an insight into all the characters involved, and all the secondary ones as well. It deepens the emotional connection too.  On top of all this, Ruth gets called in on interesting cases, mysteries that span centuries: in The House at Sea End, the bodies of several men are discovered in a cleft in a cliff mostly hidden by the sea.  They turn out to be from WW 2, and we (and Ruth) get a crash course in the Home Guard, and what it was like to fear invasion from the Germans, and what happened one night when the Germans did cross.  It was very interesting to read, and as the body count mounts, the mystery deepens when new bodies turn up, all linked to the WW 2 grave. It's up to Ruth and Nelson to try to figure out the clues, as they fight their attraction to each other, and work out what role he gets to play in Kate's life as the undeclared father. It's a nice interplay of the past affecting the future, and how the choices made now make the future to come, as the mystery graphically illustrates.

A Room Full of Bones takes us back in time to the medieval ages, and a bishop's casket that is uncovered during an excavation for a new building site.  The church it originally was part of was long since decommissioned.  Ruth is called in to examine the bones and determine if they could be the holy bones of the bishop.  In the same museum where the casket is to be opened to the public,  the curator of the museum is killed just before the museum is filled for the casket opening. Ruth   stumbles upon the body when she is  the first to arrive at the museum, s she gets an eyewitness viewing to the scene of the corpse and the casket. Later on, because of her field of work, she is taken downstairs to look at skulls collected by the ancestor of the museum.  They are Aborigine skulls from Australia, and the death of the curator is possibly linked to an Aborigine group who are seeking to reclaim the skulls to go back to Australia to enter the ground and the Dreamtime, a very important part of Aborigine religion.

This was a fascinating mystery.  In fact I read both books breathlessly, one in February, then A Room Full of Bones last month, unable to put them down.  There is something about Ruth, and her view of the world, and where she lives on the saltmarshes of Norfolk, that she is living a life I'd like to lead. . The mysteries are good, the characters are really fun, and it's very well-written  I really like the progression of the characters through each novel. I have always enjoyed series where I can see how events impact on characters, and this series is rich with this.   I highly recommend this series to anyone. Oh, and the descriptions of the archaeological digs is fascinating too.  Ruth is one of my favourite mystery characters, and this series is among my favourite series now.

So have you read any good mysteries lately?

The Sunday Salon - The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

I was in  a reading funk last week.  I picked up four or five books, read a few pages, put them down again. I knew my knee was distracting me, and sorrow, so I waited while I went to work and came back, some reading time lost because I am not taking the bus while my kneee heals.  Finally, I got so impatient on Thursday, I looked around me and thought, what do I want to read?  My eyes lit on The Snowman, the latest Jo Nesbo thriller featuring my love, Harry Hole.  Harry!  I thought. Harry can save me!  And indeed, he did.

For two days I read it, yesterday lost in bliss for most of the afternoon.  The Snowman is chilling, eerie, creepy.  Harry is back to his old self, that is, the self we met in The Redbreast before he went on his drinking binges over the next few books.  He is without his protector and former boss Byarne Moller, who has joined the ranks of the Dead Policeman's Society gracing Harry's wall:  Ellen Gjelten, and Jack Halvorsen, Harry's previous colleagues, and Byarne Moller, all dead over the previous  books in the series. Harry is now alone in his police force, and he knows it.  Even though he has two new colleagues assigned to work with him, he is not liked, although he is respected for his detective work, he is feared because he is that worst of policemen also, an alcoholic who regularly goes on drinking benders.

And yet, be still my heart.  For he is Harry Hole, who has love and loyalty too, to give, and who when he is not drinking, is the keenest detective alive. He makes brilliant leaps of deduction, but can't see what is in front of him until it's almost too late.  He is also clever enough to realize that the plight of the motherless children reminds him of how he felt when his own mother died, which we get to see in this novel.  He may be a lone wolf, but it's not because he doesn't care, it's because he can't find his right home outside of the police work he does.  At the end of the novel, when he is offered what he thinks is a choice, and he accepts.  It means that for the first time, he has realized he has to find more in his life, more to his life.  That seeking justice and the thrill of the hunt are not enough to sustain him any more.  I for one am terribly anxious now to read his next book!  Will he be in North Africa?  What will Harry do next?  If he stays on the force, what next for him?

So, the plot: is it good?  Yes, very. The Snowman is about a series of missing mothers.  All of them are linked by a snow Man built near the house.  The first snow fall of the year.  And yet, the children in the house didn't build the snow man.  When one woman's head is found on a snowman, and another has the missing woman's scarf tied around it, the police realize the cases are linked, and that a serial killer, one of Norway's first, is among them.

Harry is put in charge of the investigating team as he is the only one with experience with the only other serial killer in Norway.  He has also been on a serial killer FBI course in the USA because of this experience.  So he is the logical one to put in charge.   As always, the clues are in the details, and following Harry as he finds each clue and puts them together makes for riveting reading.  This is a very good police procedural.  It's also a very good mystery, even though I had narrowed the possible killers down to two, by 2/3 of the way through the book, this in no way took from the mystery - instead, I kept urging Harry to find the one thing that would confirm what I suspected!    And when he does, it is still almost too late.

This gets 5/5 from me.  Highly recommended, just make sure you have some hours free when you sit down with it, because you really won't want to do anything else but follow Harry as he uncovers the secret behind The Snowman.

Other bloggers and reviews:
Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise