Indridason, a writer of
Scandinavian Crime Fiction, is from Iceland, and he wrote this book
(in direct translation: The Cold Fire) in 2010. Although the book has
been translated to Swedish, I have not yet found any reference to an
English translation (although many of Indridason's earlier books have
already been translated). When the book is finally translated to
English, it could well be given a completely different name.
This is a tale of loss,
revenge and murder set against the very
prominent harshness of an
Icelandic winter. I felt that Indridason managed to sustain a certain
air of suspense throughout the book, with the reader knowing vaguely
what may have happened but not exactly why or how. However, that
said, I also felt that much of the story was built on a mixture of
co-incidence
and the, at times, extremely
strange actions of
the main character, Erlendur,
which, in any normal situation, would have been considered bizarrely
outside the law.
Although descriptions
of the harsh landscape and even the characters themselves are
well-rounded, giving a good background to the story, Erlendur's
obsessive concentration on
things that have
absolutely nothing to do with him is,
at times, quite disturbing. The ending, though vaguely hinted
at in the beginning of the book, is,
I felt, slightly out of sync with the book as a whole. Easy to read.
Something to fill the gap between more challenging books.