We come to the author of a crime novel with the most unpronounceable last name of all for a Spanish speaker. And yet also one of the most valued surnames in the black genre for everyone. With translations in up to 37 languages, his novels have been read even in Djibouti, I suppose. I mean Arnaldur Indriðason.
This Icelandic writer has that something differential. It does not have to be to the taste of all readers of the genre, but it is as if Arnaldur were able to place you within an unsettling scenario, around a sinister case to be solved, in the middle of a wasteland overlooking a wonderful northern lights of colors as intense as maddening.
It may sound strange to you, but never underestimate your empathic capacity. Knowing the author's Icelandic origins, I assure you that he will end up leading you through his imagination, full of sunny nights, dark days and skies with bright magnetic effects.
The truth is that thanks to that exotic point of these parts, the crime novel of other Nordic authors, from Mankell but also Jo nesbo (because it encompasses the vast majority in chronological order), it has been triumphing for years.
But in my opinion, only Arnaldur exploits that ability to narrate between the telluric forces of a cold and inhospitable land as a metaphor for the inner heart of any psychopath.
3 Recommended Novels by Arnaldur Indriðason
Stolen innocence
The best representative of nordic genre noir, insular version, returns with one of its plots of maximum psychological tension towards that total thriller that connects with fears that are born from the telluric, taking advantage of the vast solitude of Iceland made home not only of the author himself but also of his gruesome settings and his disturbing characters.
Because icelandic Arnaldur Indridason he surrenders to a deep narrative within this aspect of the criminal that has been giving so much in world literature in recent decades. And become a great exponent of Iceland, no one like him takes advantage of the icy landscapes, the wide steppes in which there is no possible hiding place beyond the darkness sifted for months and months ...
In this stolen innocence that the writer presents to us on this occasion, we meet two characters who have just left the scene with the grim reaper taking them out violently. Death has taken them away as part of a sinister plan for whose final unveiling, the good old inspector Erlendur will have to pull the only possible clue: the past relationship between the two as teacher and student.
From those days of learning and tuition a long time has passed. The teacher continued to practice as such while the student has ended up sinking into mental illness as a consequence of God knows what the hells he visited.
But now the death of both opens a path darkened by madness and fear. A path that seems to lead towards the fire of those hells that has ended up burning them both. Because the suicide of the young schizophrenic and his former teacher marry something else, with an unspeakable secret, to whose simple sensation of being discovered, both preferred death.
Deathly silence
Iceland, actually an island isolated from the European continent that, however, can also house secrets of that dark time between 39 and 45, World War II.
Some bones of the present arouse the curiosity of researchers of all kinds, from the detective Erlendur to the archaeologists themselves who assume the tasks of exhumation.
The mysterious bones were found in some stony hills near Reykjavik, a space used as a last refuge by the defenseless inhabitants who discovered at one point that the distant drums of war affected them too.
The study of the bones ends up being a trip to stories remembered by locals, dark evocations and events that make up a sinister tale that the ice of the memory of the Icelanders seemed to have kept safe, for the good of all.
The passage of the shadows
Ancient secrets slip through this story of old Reykjavik. As in Sepulchral Silence, the Second World War and the installation of the English and American allies on that island strategically located in the marketplace generated deep down a very clear cultural shock.
It is not that everyone knows each other on the island, but much of what should not be known, ends up knowing. So burying secrets ended up becoming a custom in those parts. Already during those hard years of war and even today, life can hang by a thread as soon as you meet or participate in some family dishonor ...
Other books by Arnaldur Indridason ...
Arctic winter
What I previously commented on the mimicry with the stage as part of the author's imagination. A winter that seems to have no end darkens the world in Iceland.
Without sun, man breaks his balance of the circadian rhythm, and the truth is that the mind suffers its effects. A stabbed child appears in the middle of the street, between the ice. Its Thai origins point to an outbreak of xenophobia.
The problem is, there is no shortage of potential killers. A novel that delves into the coldest winter in the world and its government of the soul.
Other recommended books by Arnaldur Indridason
Reykjavik nights
Propitious victims who wander the streets without horizon or destination. Homeless that nobody cares about but that sometimes can become part of a plan or side effects of a dark plot that moves through those same deserted streets made their domain. Even in icy streets like those of Reykjavík, where it seems that no one can observe or bear witness to anything that may happen as revenge or settling scores... Because even homeless people can be homeless while escaping from some past with big secrets.
In an old marsh area of the Icelandic capital, the corpse of a homeless man appears floating in a pond. Since almost no one cares about his death, the police quickly file the case. One less problem. However, a young agent named Erlendur, who knew the beggar from his rounds in the heart of the city, begins to become obsessed with the circumstances of the tragic event. There are several details that indicate that it was not a simple accident and Erlendur is firmly convinced that everyone deserves justice.
Die im Artikel in deutscher Sprache erscheinenden Titel sind nur wörtliche Übersetzungen der spanischen Ausgaben, in keinem Fall aber die richtigen Titel der deutschen Übersetzungen.