The line-up for the International Dagger Award is quite interesting from a Scandinavian perspective: Among the six shortlisted authors are three from the Scandinavian countries. They are all, of course, excellent authors and great books:

1. Tonino Benacquista: Badfellas
2. Andrea Camilleri: August Heat
3. Arnaldur Indridason: Hypothermia
4. Stieg Larsson: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest
5. Deon Meyer: Thirteen Hours
6. Johan Theorin: The Darkest Room

Indridason, Larsson and Theorin are all wonderful and write excellent crime fiction. Even so, this time I have to say that I hope Stieg Larsson wins. Not only because The Girl Who Kicket the Hornets’ Nest is superb, but also because this is Larsson’s last chance to win this prize. Stieg Larsson will, sadly, not be competing any more.

PS: Johan Theorin actually won the CWA International Dagger with The Darkest Room. I had hoped for Stieg Larsson, partly for sentimental reasons, but The Darkest Room is an excellent novel too. Our congratulations to Johan Theorin and Sweden!

New York Times mentions three Scandinavian crime fiction books in it’s recent feature on Notable crime books of 2009:

The criminal motivation in Arnaldur Indridason’s ARCTIC CHILL (Minotaur, $24.99) can be traced to murderous racial prejudice against Asian immigrants in Iceland. Sex trafficking is the common theme of two high-impact Swedish thrillers: BOX 21 (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26), by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom, and THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE (Knopf, $25.95), by Stieg Larsson.

It’s great, of course, that Scandinavian books are mentioned on this list. And the books mentioned are good books. But I am actually disappointed that there was only 3 Scandinavian out of the 16 books mentioned. Whatever happened to the 2009 books by Karin Fossum, Camilla Läckberg, Hakan Nesser, Johan Theorin, Jo Nesbo, and the rest? And to other European writers?

To my mind, a far too American-centered list by New York Times. Too much xenofobia among the good folks in the Big Apple?

Iceland is a strange, austere and beautiful place. And the prize winning Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason is some ways like his country – strange and surprising, somewhat austere in his writing style, but beautiful as well, with an ability to evoke sentiments and create a desire to read his stories. And Erlendur – the detective in this and the other books in the Reykjavik Murder Mystery series – is Indridason and Iceland as well – thoughtful, compassionate, with some strong inbuilt desire to resolve old criminal cases and disappearances. And as usual, the inter linkages between past and present and perhaps even reality and supernatural, complex as they may be, are made gradually explicit, exposed and made understandable as we follow this strange yet so likable man in his investigation and his somewhat deductive but so complex reasoning in this mystical, magical tour of a story.

In Hypothermia Erlendur’s gloomy, perhaps even somewhat miserable life is showing signs of improving. He seems to be finally moving on from his infernal diet of micro waved food. As well, there are at least some signs that there may be improvements ahead for his children. But Erlendur – and we know him well by now – seems to have a need for misery and mystery. And this time he finds mystery at many levels.

This time it is a strange suicide in beautiful lakeside surroundings that starts the detective from Reykjavik pondering. A woman is found hanging from a beam in her summer cottage. It is a straightforward suicide – that’s not where the mystery is.

The mystery – perhaps fascination is a more appropriate description – starts when a friend of the woman gives Erlendur a tape of a séance attended the dead woman, where she tried to communicate with her mother and learn about the world beyond. As we know Erlendur has a deep need to know and understand, and now he feels a need to understand what it was that made this woman commit suicide.

Erlendur examines and reflects on the woman’s obsessions. As it turns out, the search for an answer to this case and a couple or other, seemingly unrelated cases, brings him far into the depths of his own personal history and the event that more than any other he needs to understand and make sense of – the loss of his young brother in a blizzard.

Hypothermia, excellently translated by Victoria Cribb, is beautifully written, moves at a pleasing speed, and is full of interesting observations. It is more than just another crime fiction book – it is also a book sentiments; love, loss, longing. It tells sad stories without happy endings, but in a remarkable and very insightful fashion. One of the very appealing aspects of this book is how the psyche of the detective – Erlendur – which has evolved and emerged gradually in the series, is also at the same time a constituent in both the mystery and it’s “solution”.

Hypothermia is, to my mind, the best novel so far in one of the best modern crime fiction series. A lovely book.

Praise:

“This series places Indriðason at the center of the best of contemporary crime fiction. He is a master storyteller, and has a real gift for evoking complex humanity.”

— The Guardian

“Inspector Erlendur is one of the most compassionate detectives to come this way in a long time.”

— The New York Times

“One of those crime writers who rises above genre, combining suspense with moving insights into the human condition.”

— Sunday Times

Links to Arnaldur Indridason’s books at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

The plot in Voices bears certain similarities to the plot in Gaston Leroux’s 1908 mystery, The Mystery Of The Yellow Room, and to some other classical mysteries as well. However, Voices is much more psychologically penetrating in its approach than any of these. Yet another deeply satisfying tale of the odd Reykjavik inspector Erlendur Sveinson!

In Voices, Santa, an employee named Gudlaugur, is found murdered in the basement of a stylish hotel in Reykjavik a few days before Christmas, and in a sexually compromising position: with his pants on his knees and a condom on his penis. The manager, understandably, is desperate to keep any whiff of scandal away from guests arriving to spend a cheery holiday amid reindeer and Icelandic hot springs.

Inspector Erlendur, who became known to crime readers when Indridason won the Gold Dagger for crime fiction with Silence of the Grave, is on another complicated case. Erlendur and his team investigate the death of this long-term employee, whom his colleagues neither noticed nor liked, against the disapproval and even hostility of the hotel staff. Erlendur, following some strange impulse, rather than return to his empty flat at the end of the first day of the investigation, takes a room at the hotel – perhaps more to spite the manager than anything else. It isn’t a nice room and the heating doesn’t work, but it forms the nucleus for the story over the few days that follow, as Erlendur quietly observes and absorbs the “voices” and rhythms of the hotel, and increasingly has to try to explain to various colleagues and his daughter why he isn’t home for Christmas.

Erlendur, using the hotel room as his base, talks to and becomes acquainted with the staff of the hotel. He talks to the chambermaid who found the body, to a seedy British guest, to the manager, and the others. Along with a picture of the dead man emerges a picture of a hotel with layers and layers of secrets. So does the dead Gudlaugur.

Meanwhile, Elinborg, Erlendur’s female assistant, works with a case where a small boy has repeatedly arrived in hospital with minor injuries, which give rise to suspicions of parental cruelty. This story is seamlessly intertwined with the main story, and creates a whole in Voices where the two cases reinforce one another into a study of childhood and consequences of childhood experiences and abuses. As well, Erlendur himself has lost a brother at an early age, and somehow we see how this has affected to relationship to his own drug-addict daughter.

Voices is another outstanding novel by Arnaldur Indridason. The story has well-developed characters that as a reader you are either drawn to and empathize with or feel appalled by. The text is spare and direct. The plot is well developed, complex and well paced. Indridason knows how to make you turn the pages. Reading Voices is very worthwhile.

Other great Icelandic crime books by Arnaldur Indridason at amazon.com US include Tainted Blood, Jar City, and Silence of the Grave: A Reyjavik Murder Mystery.

If you prefer amazon UK, you may follow these links: Arctic Chill, Voices, Tainted Blood, Jar City, and Silence of the Grave.