Icelandic crime fiction

November 1967, Iceland. Fourteen year-old Marsi has a secret pen pal, a boy who lives on the other side of the country – but she has been writing to him in her older sister’s name. Now, she is excited to meet him for the first time. But when the date arrives, Marsi is prevented from going, and during the night, her sister, Stina, goes missing. Her bloodstained anorak is later found at the place where Marsi and her pen pal had agreed to meet. No trace of Stina, dead or alive, is ever found.

The narrative jumps backwards and forwards between 1967 and 1977, the 1967 voice being that of Stina and the 1977 voice belonging to Marsi. Marsi receives a letter purporting to be from her pen pal of ten years earlier and, when a Danish au pair is found dead by the roadside (apparently from exposure) another letter addressed to Marsi is found on the body.

If you wanted an archetypal Nordic Noir novel, this certainly ticks all the boxes. The unrelenting climate and landscape dominate everything; angst, suspicion, nightmares, neuroses and dark thoughts combine to make a vast umbrella which keeps out anything remotely humorous or optimistic. Marsi dreams:

“Not long afterwards, I drifted off to sleep. For once, I dreamt about Dad. Dreamed he came and sat on my bed, stroked my cheek and gazed at me with staring, deep-set eyes.But every time he opened his mouth to speak, I heard the croaking of a raven.”

One of the problems the reader may face as regards working out what is going on, is that Marsi is, to put it mildly, a rather disturbed young woman. Some might say that she is as mad as a box of frogs, but how reliable a narrator is she? Is her memory warped by trauma? I should remind readers that the book consists of two first person accounts of events, that of Marsi and that of Stina. This, of course, raises the technical dilemma of Stina’s account. Because she is telling us what is happening in the winter 0f 1967, are we to assume that she is still alive? It is not quite such a conundrum as that of Schrödinger’s Cat but, outside the realm of supernatural fiction, the dead cannot speak.

Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (left) gives us few clues as to the fate of Stina until a violent denouement finally reveals the truth, but before that happens we are drawn into the mystery of a reform school for girls thought to be wayward – think of an Icelandic version of the Magdalene Laundries – and, in particular the fate of one young woman suspected of having a ‘special relationship’ with an American soldier. There is certainly an air of perpetual darkness about this book, which has all the aspects of a particularly unpleasant nightmare from which, despite your having reached out and turned on the bedside lamp, and no matter how many times you blink or shake your head, you simply cannot wake up and leave behind. Home Before Dark was translated by Victoria Cribb and was published by Orenda Books on 17th July.

A well-connected Reykjavik civil servant and former politician fails to turn up to his 50th birthday party. The body of Óttar Karlsson is later found on an isolated beach. He had been beaten, and has died of his wounds. Police detective Sigurdís Höllódottir is part of the investigative team. She has just returned to duty after being reprimanded for over-enthusiastically restraining a young man who was beating up his girlfriend. Sigurdís’s intolerance of such behaviour is rooted in her own traumatic childhood, where her father was a serial abuser. After he served a prison term for a serious assault on her younger brother, Einar he disappeared. The family hope he is gone for good but Einar receives a message on Facebook. It seems that his father is working on a farm in Denmark, and is using the name Daniel Christensen but, much worse, he is determined to return to Iceland.

There is another strand concerning the reappearance of Sigurdís’s father. The violent evening where he nearly killed Einar was the culmination of years of abuse melted out to his wife. He was a serving police officer and his colleagues, including Sigurgeirsson, knew perfectly well what was going on – and they did nothing. Now, however, Sigurgeirsson is determined to redeem himself by monitoring the man very closely, if and when he returns to Reykjavik.

The search for Karlsson’s killer opens up the proverbial can of worms, as it becomes obvious that the dead man had many secrets, not the least of which is his time in America as a young man, and his involvement with a mysterious cult and its charismatic leader.

To say the denouemont is unexpected would be an understatement. The author cleverly leads us away from the truth page by page and red herring by red herring. Neither Sigurdís or her boss Garđar Sigurgeirsson really come near the truth until Sigurdís makes a trip to Minnesota, on the pretext of taking a week’s leave, and hears the real history of Óttar’s time in America.

Sigurdís’s primal fear of her father’s reappearance starts off as side issue, but the consequences of his return to Iceland are explained in the final two pages, and strongly hint that there may be a sequel. Dead Sweet is an excellent debut novel by Katrín Júlíusdóttir who is a former politician herself, having held the position of Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs of Iceland. This experience undoubtedly adds authenticity to the pacy narrative. Dead Sweet is translated by Quentin Bates, published by Orenda books and is available now.