Yrsa Sigurdardottir has written several thrillers, but this is the first one I've read. I picked it mostly because of the setting--it takes place at an arctic mining camp on the Eastern coast of Greenland. It's isolated, forbidding, and according to the locals, cursed. Three workers from the camp have disappeared and Thora Gudmundsdotter, an Icelandic lawyer, and her boyfriend, Matthew Reich, an employee of the bank underwriting the mining company, have been sent to this hostile landscape to investigate. What they find surprises even them.
The back of the book calls this mystery "chilling, unsettling, and compulsively readable", and I couldn't agree more. You don't know if the people at the camp went crazy, or if the harsh climate was responsible, or the locals, or the spirits of the dead ... but you don't want to stop reading until you find out. And even though Thora is a recurring character, it didn't seem to matter that I hadn't read any of her previous novels. This novel stands alone just fine. I thought it was a great read--an intense Nordic crime novel without being too dark or too gritty. I can't wait to try this author again.
Happy Reading!
Similar reads:
The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi
Where Monsters Dwell by Jorgen Brekke
I've never read this author, but I generally enjoy Nordic Crime. I'll have to give her a try!
ReplyDeleteShe's good. I just finished reading the first novel with Thora Gudmundsdottir in it...The Last Ritual...and really enjoyed that one, too.
DeleteThis sounds like a good read. I read her book "I Remember You," which is a ghost story set in Iceland. I wasn't sure what I thought about the ending at first, but I liked it enough that I'll have to give one of her other books a try.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to try that one. (You know I like ghost stories.)
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