Review of Outrage by Arnaldur Indridason

Inspector Erlendur is away and Elinborg, one his trusty colleagues, is left to deal with any new cases. As a senior detective she is trying to balance the pressures of work with home life and looking after her three kids and husband. When the body of a young man is found in his apartment with his throat slashed she is assigned to the case. The investigation quickly alters track when a date-rape drug is found in his possession. It seems that one of his victims, or someone known to them, has exacted a terrible revenge. Despite her revulsion for his crimes, Elinborg patiently pieces together the events leading to the young man's death, whilst also trying to maintain a harmonious domestic life.

I finished Outrage just over a week before I sat down to write this review. What is unsettling is the fact that a lot of the plot had already started to slip away from my memory. I know I enjoyed reading the book a lot, but a fair bit failed to stick to the old grey cells. This has led me to reflect a little on Indridason's other translated books - all of which I've read. I've a mixed memory with respect to them. For example, I remember Jar City very well even though it's a few years since I've read it, but although Hypothermia was one of my books of 2010, I can't for the life of me recall what it was about (and I'm usually pretty good at remembering books and their plots). I think this is because Indridason's forte is ordinary characters and exposing the mundane and banal aspects of everyday life and police investigations. His stories are carefully layered and reflective, are philosophical in a literary sense, and have fairly ambiguous endings. It is the style, atmosphere and the central characters that linger not the plot. They're books that create a certain mood, rather than a visceral impact. That's also the reason why I like them so much. Outrage is a fine addition to the series, allowing one of the support characters to come to the fore. The reader finds out much more about Elinborg and her family circumstances and history, which was a nice complement to simply tracking Erlendur from book to book. Despite the fact that the stories seem to slip away from me, I'll be in the queue for the next one.

Review of Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason (Harvill Secker, 2010, published in Icelandic 1999)

In the middle of a fierce storm at the tail end of the Second World War a German bomber crashes into the vast Vatnajokull glacier on Iceland. One man sets off for help, the pilot and five passengers remain with the plane, slowly being covered with thick snow and being swallowed by the ice. Forty four years later and the melting glacier starts to give up its secret. The American secret service sends in a team to try and salvage the plane without alerting the Icelandic government of its mission. However, their presence on the glacier is discovered by two young mountain rescuers out on a training mission. Elias manages to briefly phone his sister Kristin, a lawyer for the Foreign Ministry, before he is surrounded by soldiers. Not only will he have to die to protect the secret of Operation Napoleon, but so will his sister. But when two American operatives force their way into her apartment she manages to escape. Fearing a conspiracy between the American and Icelandic governments she doesn’t know who to turn to, all she knows is that her brother is in trouble and quite possibly dead, and the American’s want her likewise. On the run, she resolves to find out the secret of the crashed bomber.

Operation Napoleon was originally published in Icelandic in 1999, Indridason’s third book after the first two, as yet untranslated, Detective Erlendur novels. Unlike his police procedural novels, Operation Napoleon is a thriller. The strengths of the book are the characterisation and the pace. Kristin is well penned and her back story well elaborated, and the other characters have sufficient depth to be memorable and credible. Indridason keeps the pace high throughout, with sufficient tension to keep the reader turning the pages. Where the book suffers, however, is with respect to the story. It starts well enough, with Indridason setting the characters and back story in place, but from the minute Kristin ends up on the run it is difficult to believe in the story. It’s interesting, and at times exciting, but never really credible. The minute I start to ask, ‘but why didn’t ...?’ or ‘how come ...?’ questions a story is in trouble. I was asking these questions every twenty pages or so. And the ending is simply ludicrous. I won’t say anything to avoid spoilers, but however history would have unfolded it would not have resulted in this ending. Given the pacing, the book lacks the introspection and philosophical elements that are the real strengths of the Erlendur novels. Overall, a fairly entertaining book as long as you’re prepared to suspend your sense of realism.

A review of Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason (Harvill Secker 2009; 2007 Icelandic)

A middle-aged woman is found hanging from a beam in her summer cottage, a few metres from Lake Thingvellir.  The woman had long been depressed and the death of her mother two years previously had sent her on a downwards spiral.  The death seems like a straightforward case of suicide.  And yet, Detective Erlunder, senses that something isn’t quite right.  No stranger to loss and depression himself, he starts to piece together her life, undertaking an unofficial investigation in order to understand why she hung herself, confounding his colleagues and upsetting the woman’s husband.  At the same time he takes a look at two unresolved cases, a young man and woman who simply disappeared in the 1970s.  All three deaths inevitably make him reflect on the death of his younger brother in a snowstorm when they were children, which he survived, and his sense of loss and guilt.

Hypothermia is a book that slowly draws you in, wraps a warm blanket around you and envelopes you in intricately woven narrative layers.  Indridson’s skill is in the plotting and pacing of stories; in placing his readers in the landscape and culture of Iceland and capturing the humdrum interweaving of lives, the mundane and everyday conflicts and betrayals, and exploring the small and petty things that people do to each other.  The under-stated narrative is driven by a steady pace and emotional register, rather than high tension or drama, with the same questions about love, loss, guilt and life after death repeated discordantly with respect to the cases Erlunder investigates and his own life.  The result is a book with qualities like a fine wine – a subtle but complex blend of colours, smells and tastes rather than the whiz-bang of a rollercoaster.  Hypothermia is a fine addition to the Erlunder series which has developed into a strong and satisfying set of stories that make perfect reading for wet and windy nights.