I live in the Southern California desert, drenched in sunlight most days of the year. For me, traveling to cold, wet or snowy climates is a pleasure, even though our trip to Scotland was mared by May sun and our September journey to Alaska had no rain. Our travel weather karma is almost frightening as we seem cursed to find sunshine and high temps wherever we go.
However, I can always find foul weather in fiction. Especially the fiction set in Iceland. Jar City in particular had nasty weather. Weeks of unbroken rain that even had the protagonists wondering if it would ever stop. An entire novel set in the rain. By the end, I was reaching for a sweater (perhaps a lopapeysa) and wanting another cup of hot coffee.
Arnaldur Indridason’s Jar City, a Reykjavik Thriller, is firmly located, not just in Iceland, but within the noir tradition. It is filled with darkness and concrete. Brutal crimes and cynical policemen. Tensions simmering just beneath the surface. Tainted heroes and bad guys who might sometimes have a soul.
Iceland is more than just another Scandinavian nation near the Arctic Circle that today is only enjoying about 7 hours of daylight. It is an isolated nation, closer physically to North America than to Europe, it traces its literary and genealogical roots back through its epic family sagas. Iceland is a nation that made its living off of the sea and its bounty, tended to be insular and still has no standing army. Its population is about 320,000 people, most of whom live in the Reykjavik area. A population that small and that isolated has to have some interesting genetic issues, enough to prompt the creation of a national genetic data base and to play a role in a thriller.
Family is important in a nation this small where most people are known by their first names and are probably connected or perhaps distantly related to each other. Detective Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson is known as Erlendur throughout the series. His daughter is Eva Lind, his son, Sindri Snaer (both are names he hates but were given by their mother, his ex-wife of two decades about whom little is said). His partners are known simply as Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg.
In Jar City, an old man is found dead in his basement apartment of an apparent blow to the head from a heavy ashtray. Lying on top of his body is an unsigned note with the words “I am HIM.” With no clues other than the note and a photograph of a child’s grave, the three detectives, led by Erlendur begin searching his past, slowly unraveling a tale that is darkly intriguing as it leads us through the lives of the victims of the old man. Just because he is dead, Holberg is not necessarily innocent. Although never tried or convicted, Holberg was accused of rape in the 1960s, leading Erlendur to seek out other victims, if any exist.
Meanwhile, Erlendur's own past turns up in the form of his drug addicted daughter who is now pregnant and wants to kick her habit. Maybe. Their relationship is a demonstration of dysfunction through much of the novel. But once in a while they seem to make a positive emotional contact.
There is a rare humanity on display in this novel. Erlendur sees the evil, rails against it, occasionally gives in to the despair it creates,
“You think you can put on armour against it over the years and can watch all the filth from a distance as if it’s none of your business, and try to keep your senses. But there isn’t any distance. And there’s no armour. No-one’s strong enough. The repulsion haunts you like an evil spirit that burrows into your mind and doesn’t leave you in peace until you believe that the filth is life itself because you’ve forgotten how ordinary people live.”
He questions a God he is not sure exists, but he seems somehow to be able to hold on to some shreds of faith, in life, in the future, and the ultimate hope that the rain will eventually end. There is no promise that when it ends the sun will come out, but only that it will someday end.
This is Indridason’s third novel in the Erlendur series which are a huge hit in Iceland, with most in the nation waiting each November to find what the latest installment will bring. Although the third in the series, this Bernard Scudder translation was the first to be published in the States. The translation has been highly praised by others, including the author of tonight's second novel, Quentin Bates:
Incidentally, Arnaldur and Yrsa [Sigurdardottir] both had the tremendous good fortune to be translated into English by the mighty Bernard Scudder, who did a magnificent job – to the extent that their books are as good, if not better, in English than in Icelandic.
According to his publisher,
Macmillan,
Arnaldur Indridason was born in 1961. He worked at an Icelandic newspaper, first as a journalist and then for many years as a reviewer. He won the Nordic Crime Novel Award for Jar City and won again for its sequel, Silence of the Grave, which also won the prestigious Gold Dagger Award. He lives in Reykjavík, Iceland.
Made into a
film in 2006,
Jar City
...was immensely popular with critics and audiences alike. The film won some of the major prizes (Film of the Year, Director of the Year, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor) at the Eddas, the Icelandic Film and Television Awards, and was selected as Iceland’s official submission for Best Foreign-Language Film at the 2008 Academy Awards.
. . .
Jar City broke box office sales records in Iceland and for nearly two years it hung onto its title as the highest-earning film shown in Icelandic cinemas.
Even though the title makes one think the weather would be worse, it actually wasn't that bad for the characters in Frozen Assets. Sun was occasionally allowed to break through the clouds in this novel by the British writer, Quentin Bates.
Born and raised in England, Bates lived in Iceland from the late 70s until 1990 when he returned to England with his Icelandic wife. In the years since then, they have traveled many times to Iceland and relatives and friends have traveled from Iceland to visit them. As a matter of fact, he was "in Iceland that week when the banks admitted that they’d gambled other people’s money and lost the lot," according to his comments in an interview with Scandinavian Crime Fiction. He discussed what intrigued him about Iceland then,
There’s strange a blend of world view and small-town attitudes that sit uncomfortably together. I found it fascinating that the place was so small and informal, with even government ministers listed in the phone book, and it was a very compact society with one phone book for the whole country. Back then it was very close to being a very equal society. Nobody was obscenely rich, while there was no abject poverty either. Of course, that’s all changed now and watching the changes take place has been an intriguing process.
and what it is like now,
To be brutal, Iceland is still in turmoil following the crisis as things lurch from one crisis to another and new revelations are still coming to light. In all honesty, Iceland isn’t recovering. Ordinary working people are getting extra taxes heaped on them while education, healthcare, law enforcement and pretty much everything else is being cut to the bone. At the same time, those responsible for the present situation don’t appear to have lost out in the least.
Since he was in Iceland when the truth about the financial crash began to come out, he rewrote
Frozen Assets to make "full use of the events."
Sergeant Gunnhildur Gisladottir, or Gunna the Cop is a likable, phlegmatic, middle-aged police officer who heads up the small force of two in the harbor town of Hvalvik on the south-west coast of Iceland. Normally their beat includes minor traffic or fishing quota violations and breaking up the occasional brawl between overserved fishermen while patrolling in one of two Volvos.
Since the loss of her husband a few years past, she seems to have found some measure of contentment in her work and the raising of her two children. The oldest, her son, has joined the major industry in Hvalvik and gone to sea. Her daughter makes brief appearances in the book but appears to be a normal, albeit well behaved 13 year old.
The story opens with the discovery of the body of a man floating in the harbor with an alchohol blood level too high to have driven the 100 kilometers from where he was last seen drinking in Reykjavik. And no car was found nearby. So how did he wind up in Gunna's harbor? Complicating her investigation is the young journalist who had been assigned to shadow her for a human interest story to appear in a Reykjavik paper.
As her dogged investigation continues, we are introduced to the personal and professional shenanigans of the political and financial classes of Iceland through the regular blog postings of Skandalblogger. Which is, of course, where the investigation must lead.
Well plotted, with believable dialogue and interesting characters, Frozen Assets is the first in the series. Cold Comfort was just released in January and follows Gunna the Cop as she moves into a new assignment. A third book, Chilled to the Bone, has not been released yet, but a short excerpt can be found on the author's website.
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule
DAY |
TIME (EST/EDT) |
Series Name |
Editor(s) |
SUN |
3:00 PM |
The Magic Theater |
ArkDem14 |
SUN |
6:00 PM |
Young Reader's Pavilion |
The Book Bear |
SUN |
9:30 PM |
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club |
quarkstomper |
MON |
8:00 PM |
Monday Murder Mystery |
Susan from 29 |
MON |
11:00 PM |
My Favorite Books/Authors |
edrie, MichiganChet |
TUE |
8:00 PM |
Readers & Book Lovers Newsletter |
Limelite |
TUE |
10:00 PM |
Contemporary Fiction Views |
bookgirl |
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7:30 AM |
WAYR? |
plf515 |
WED |
8:00 PM |
Bookflurries: Bookchat |
cfk |
THU |
8:00 PM |
Write On! |
SensibleShoes |
FRI |
8:00 AM |
Books That Changed My Life |
aravir |
FRI |
10:00 PM (first of month) |
Monthly Bookposts |
AdmiralNaismith |
SAT |
11:00 AM (fourth of month) |
Windy City Bookworm |
Chitown Kev |
SAT |
9:00 PM |
Books So Bad They're Good |
Ellid |
Links to books covered in past diaries can be found
here