Yrsa Sigurdardottir

This was an excellent piece of Scandicrime. Once I got reading the book, I could hardly put it down.

In Hofn, a small village on the south coast of Iceland, the new owners of a house find find some boxes left behind by the man who sold them the house. They return them, and the former owner notices an old muddied child's shoe among the items, with the name " Salvor" written on the sole. He is puzzled by this , not knowing anyone by the name Salvor. Shortly after the return of these items, the show more nursing home where his mother , an Alzheimer's patient, lives, calls to say his mother has had a heart attack, and asks him to tell his sister Salvor as well. His mother has been after asking her. But who is Salvor?

Meanwhile, a group of inexperienced hikers have gone missing in the midst of a harsh winter near the Hofn area. Johanna, a part of the search and rescue team, is out trying to locate the the hikers, who are feared dead.

In a remote, deserted radar station in Hofn, Hjorvar works mainly by himself, with one other worker taking the alternate shifts. One night, the phone that is connected to the entry/exit gate of the station rings. Horvar answers and a child's voice asks for her mother. Chillingly, it turns out that this phone has been disconnected for years.

Are these events connected? This novel had my blood running cold at times, and glad that I don't live alone.

Highly recommended. show less

The subtitle of this novel is “a ghost story,” and so it is. I can’t remember when I last read a novel that was so whole-heartedly about ghosts. Some books have a touch here and there of the supernatural – but this is flat-out a suspenseful horror tale with a touch of mystery. And it’s quite a lot of fun.

There are two major threads to the novel. In one, a group of ill-prepared citified Icelanders have decided to renovate an abandoned house in Hesteyri, a remote fishing village in show more the northwestern fjords of Iceland that is no longer inhabited except for occasional summer vacationers. They hope to make a go of it, hosting paying summer guests, but the three friends, a married couple and an urbane woman friend, have few skills and little money. After a boat captain leaves them there with supplies, promising to return in a week, they begin to realize how unprepared they are. The house is I Remember Youin much worse repair than they thought, the cold and the winter darkness is oppressive, and soon they realize they aren’t alone on the island. A strange, ragged child seems bent on destroying their dreams of turning the vacant house into a liveable holiday home.

Meanwhile, in the remote port of Ísaforþur, the closest town, a psychiatrist is treating a troubled old woman in a nursing home while trying to forget the fact that he lost his young son, something that drove a wedge between him and his wife (who can’t put it behind her). “Lost” isn’t a euphamism. The child disappeared without a trace, and the police can only surmise that he somehow wandered down to the sea and was drowned, his body never recovered. There is also the strange case of vandalism in a school which seems strangely like an incident decades ago.

These things, of course, are hardly random. The malevolent spirit haunting the abandoned fishing village must surely have some connection to the doctor’s missing boy, and photos defaced at the school seem strangely connected to a string of deaths . . .

A great pleasure of this story is the drawing together of these threads as the author gives us a glimpse here, a hint there of how pieces of the story connect – all with a background of impending dread. Things at the remote abandoned village go from very bad to even worse, and the pyschiatrist begins to wonder if he’s losing his mind.

I have never been a fan of ghost stories and am postiively allergic to horror as a genre, but I was surprised at how thoroughly I enjoyed reading this book, though it wasn’t always the right material to read in bed before drifting off to sleep. There are touches of humor here and there, well-drawn and sympathetic characters as well as some who are not, and a plot that keeps winding tighter and tighter. While these kinds of books are often thinly-disguised as morality tales – someone who has chosen to be evil or made a bad choice gets his or her comeuppance – the story behind the haunting places responsibility, as so often happens in Scandinavian crime fiction, on people who fail to care for the vulnerable and on indifferent social instutions that don’t live up to their responsibilities. As well as the actions of a certifiable pyschopath or two. show less

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1973, a volcanic eruption buried an entire Icelandic village in lava and ash. Now this macabre tourist attraction proves deadly once again—when the discovery of fresh bodies casts a shadow of suspicion onto Markús Magnússon, a man accused of killing his childhood sweetheart. His attorney Þóra Guðmundsdóttir finds that her client has a most inventive story to tell. But the locals seem oddly reluctant to back him up...

My Review: This is a show more dark, dark, dark book. It's not for the depressive or the depressed. The congenitally chirpy should read it because they'll finally be brought down enough not to infuriate the rest of us.

Thora (I can't do the ASCII again, it hurts my hands), the sleuth in the series (of which this is installment 3, though the first I've read), is very matter-of-fact, very unflappable. She's not unemotional, not really, as her actions indicate. But she is one of those folks in life who create a sense of calm for those around them by being solid and confident. And usually right.

The story is propelled, and I use that term advisedly, by the short chapters headed with the date and day of the week. It's an additional source of tension-building, and honestly it's not crucial because believe you me there is oodles of tension in the plot already.

I admire the Icelanders. They put the banksters who crashed the economy in jail, threw the gummint out, and they protect their people in so many ways, unlike the austerity addicts in the rest of Europe who are effin' over the people to please those same profiteering banksters. Oops, political rant, sorry. I meant to segue into, "But considering how much murder there seems to be in that country of a half-million or so, I won't be visiting any time soon." Heh. My bad. Arnaldur Indridason's novels, these by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, they paint a grim picture of the beautiful island of Iceland. Surely it's a happier place than this!

I remember watching with thrilled terror as Heimay erupted on the TV in 1973. It was so exciting to see it in color, and in almost real time! (They were simpler times, younguns, stop smirking.) The author's choice of setting is guaranteed to make me sit up and take notice. But the plot she sets in motion is what relentlessly pulled me along.

So why three and a half stars, when surely that sounds like a full four are merited? Because, I blush to admit, the place and personal names are a bugger for me to keep in my head. The text uses all the proper diacritical marks though thankfully not the thorn and eth letters that would ordinarily feature in the names. I blush to admit this, it's so very annoying a trait in me, but the Nordic languages are damn close to impenetrable to me for these reasons...the letters and the weirdass placement of accents that don't mean accenting and umlauts that don't do what I expect them to. I can't speak along in my head as I can with French or Spanish or Portuguese. It all turns into a Prairie Home Companion joke-Norwegian-accented muddle.

Yes yes, it's my problem not the text's fault, but it's my review of my response. So I assign my rating accordingly. Condemnatory tuttings are not welcome, or invited, nor will they be met with saintly silence.

This book was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers win. show less

It seems that every book Sigurdardottir writes is better than the previous. The Day Is Dark reads almost like an episode of the X-Files (without the supernatural conclusion(s)). It's set in Greenland, in the midst of snowstorms, where Thóra, Matthew and the people they're with must, well, solve a crime they don't even know is a crime. I love Thóra as a character and a narrator. Sigurdardottir brings her characters (even the side ones) to life and fills the atmosphere around them enough to show more make me believe I might really been stuck in those dorms in the middle of nowhere in Greenland. The resolution to The Day is Dark is just as good as the book itself. show less