Black Skies

With Erlendur still absent, it is Sigurdur Oli's turn to take the spotlight. He's investigating a case that by all rights he should be recusing himself from: the severe beating and subsequent death of a person accused of blackmailing a friend of a friend. His personal life is also taking a beating, with his long-time partner leaving him and himself feeling dissatisfied with his lot in the midst of the Icelandic economic boom. And then there's the man making the creepy mask…

After spending a book with Elinborg, it was interesting to meet Sigurdur Oli. As a younger, single man, he makes a good contrast with Elinborg, and as a thoroughly Anglo-Americanized Icelander, he makes a good contrast with Erlendur. I'm not sure I'd want to spend show more an entire series with him, but he was a good choice for this book. The "New Vikings" involved in the economic boom are contemporaries of his and so it could very well have been him raking in all that wealth. He has the potential to identify with them much more than Elinborg or Erlendur would have.

I especially appreciated the plot of this one because the scenario was so recognizably Icelandic (in the previous book, Outrage, the crime could have happened anywhere). This would make a good companion piece to Michael Ridpath's 66 Degrees North, which looks at events after the economic collapse.

And I've almost forgotten the subplot of the Man with the Creepy Mask. He figures prominently in the back-cover blurb and was actually the reason I put off reading the book for a while, because it seemed so grim. But in reality his subplot doesn't get very much airtime at all. Yet another case of misleading blurbs!

I would recommend this if you've already started the series. show less

Meeslepende misdaad thriller, spannend, vol mededogen met slachtoffers, terwijl het laat zien hoe slachtoffers zelf daders worden. Boeiende paradoxen ook: hoe zowel een agent als een burger "mannetjes op iemand afsturen die het leven van een dierbare heeft verwoest", en de burger tot inkeer komt, maar de agent niet. Omdat recht moet zegevieren...? Maar wie bepaalt dan wie met recht andermans leven verwoest en wie voor dezelfde daad moet bloeden? Met dat soort interessante vragen laat het boek je achter.

I’m a fan of the Icelandic mysteries of Arnaldur Indridason featuring Detective Erlendur. There have been six in the series (commonly known as the Reykjavik mysteries) translated into English. A seventh book, "Outrage", featured Detective Elinborg, Erlendur’s female colleague, because Erlendur has gone missing, ostensibly visiting the East Fjords, but no one has heard from him. "Black Skies" is a parallel to "Outrage", covering the same time period during Erlendur’s absence. The focus this time is on Sigurdur Oli, Erlendur’s male colleague.

Sigurdur Oli is asked by a friend to intervene on behalf of a couple who is being blackmailed by a woman named Sigurlina Thorgrimsdottier. When Sigurdur Oli goes to speak to her, he finds her show more “lying on the floor in a pool of blood, with a large gash in her head” (26). The investigation of her death is the major case Sigurdur Oli sets out to solve in this book. There are of course the requisite twists and turns.

Character development is the book’s strong suit. As Elinborg’s character is developed in "Outrage", Sigurdur Oli’s is in this book. He is anything but compassionate: “he rarely felt any sympathy for the luckless individuals he came across in the line of duty. . . . His usual attitude was that these people were responsible for their own plight. . . . He had often been criticized for his cynicism and detachment but this meant nothing to him” (189 – 190). Sigurdur Oli’s relationship with his long-time partner Bergthora is fractured because of his personality: “He had meant to get a grip of himself, to listen to her point of view, to try not to be rigid and difficult” (193), but is unsuccessful. He can only “put on a show of caring” (161) and resolve “to be polite and tactful, though neither was his forte” (211).

We are given insight into why Sigurdur Oli is as he is. He spent most of his childhood living with a mother who thought her son “was too good for that, meaning the police” (6) and “’far too good for Bergthora’” (245). It takes him by surprise when Bergthora tells him, “’You’re both so . . . cold. Such snobs’” (52) but later he realizes he must try to be “Not like his mother” (193). He also has another epiphany: “Sigurdur Oli knew that he had been blind and was painfully aware why: he had believed himself to be sufficiently tough, sufficiently impartial and a sufficiently good policeman . . . But it had turned out that he was none of these” (306). The inclusion of a dynamic character makes this book more than just an entertaining mystery.

The book is also interesting in terms of its touching on Iceland’s monetary crisis. Sigurdur Oli is told, “’Some people say we’re heading for a crash if we go on like this. The incredible expansion we’ve been witnessing is based almost entirely on foreign credit and there are various signs that these sources are either going to be blocked soon, or just dry up. If this global recession they talk about does happen, the banks will be in big trouble. . . . Icelandic tycoons who have acquired large holdings in the banks via their companies are taking loans from them . . . And having carved up all the biggest companies in the country between them, they’re now busy buying anything they can lay their hands on abroad, all funded by cheap borrowing. Not to mention all the games they play to boost the value of their companies, which is often based on nothing more than an illusion. On top of that they make inroads into public companies by selling their own assets to them at inflated prices. Meanwhile the bank executives award themselves options worth hundreds of millions of kronur, and then gamble by taking out loans to buy shares in the banks themselves. . . . It’s always the same handful of people doing these deals, giving and taking loans. The danger is of course that if one link is broken, the whole edifice will come tumbling down like a house of cards’” (242 - 243). What a clear, concise summary!

At the end of the book, Erlendur is still missing. His daughter is concerned because before he left, “’He seemed so down’” (55) and she hasn’t been able to contact him. Neither Elinborg nor Sigurdur Oli have heard anything (132 – 133). Will the next book in the series be an investigation into Erlendur’s disappearance? show less

Having complained at length about authors who persist in producing the same book over and over again I applaud Arnaldur Indriðason’s willingness to experiment by allowing different protagonists to drive his novels. The fact that he has pulled it off very successfully, for the second time in a row, is a triumph.

BLACK SKIES is the eighth novel in the Reykjavik series of police procedurals but the second one in succession in which the series’ main character, detective Erlunder, is absent from his workplace (for reasons none of his co-workers seem sure of) and the novel. The story takes place in 2005 during the height of Iceland’s economic boom and at the same time as events described in the previous novel OUTRAGE, but here the show more investigative duties fall to another of Erlunder’s colleagues Sigurdur Óli. It opens with Sigurdur Óli attending a reunion of his high school class at which he feels himself to be the least successful of his classmates, many of whom are making it big in the new economy. However one of those people soon calls on him for a favour. Would Sigurdur Óli mind putting a bit of unofficial pressure on a couple who are blackmailing the man’s sister-in-law and her husband who took part in a wife-swapping escapade? When Sigurdur Óli goes to the blackmailing couple’s house on this errand he finds the woman on the floor with her head bashed in. He attempts to chase the assailant who was still on the scene but soon loses him. For understandable but not terribly clever reasons Sigurdur Óli doesn’t immediately come clean with his colleagues regarding the personal reason for his visit to the woman’s house and so assists with the official investigation while continuing to carry on his own inquiries due to the knowledge that only he possesses.

It is only now that I’ve sat down to write a review containing an even vaguely intelligent synopsis that I’ve realised just how complex and intricate the plot of BLACK SKIES is. Indriðason really is a master at telling stories with lots of layers that don’t make the reader feel like they’re reading a creative writing thesis rather than a novel. It’s bloody great art. Just as you think the book is going to focus on the sexual shenanigans of bored suburbanites it twists to offer the possibility of a drug deal gone bad. And then another turn….what are the wretched bankers up to and how might it relate to the death of a tour guide? Indriðason ties this all together beautifully and manages to encircle the investigative narrative with another thread that follows the story of a derelict called Anders who keeps crossing Sigurdur Óli’s path. His story, slowly revealed over the course of the novel, is a heartbreaking one and despite his self-confessed and innate sense of superiority over people like Anders the case becomes something of a watershed for Sigurdur Óli,

Another element that elevates BLACK SKIES above the norm for me is the character of Sigurdur Óli. He bares few of the traits of the great and memorable fictional cops. He’s not a genius, he’s not a workaholic, he’s not tortured by the souls of the deaths he has investigated. He’s a pretty ordinary guy doing a job he fell into and some days he’d rather be doing something else. But even without the trappings of the genre’s stalwarts he is still a wonderfully drawn character who we do see struggle with some aspects of his life, working out how his marriage failed for example, while trying to do a good job even when he doesn’t like his work and maintaining his moral core in the face of pressure. He is, I suspect, a lot closer to real cops than many of his more famous fictional brethren.

There’s much more I could talk about, including the novel’s unpacking of Iceland’s part in the global economic meltdown which is fascinating, but I think it’s time to simply recommend the book without qualification. It’s one of those crime novels I think could be read and enjoyed by non crime fans too and I don’t think you need to have read the earlier novels in the series in order to read this one. I’ve never been so frustrated by my own monolingual status as I am at knowing this book’s sequel is available but only if I can learn to read Icelandic. show less

In retrospect, what strikes you about Indridason's books is how well crafted they are. The stories build layer on layer. They also demonstrate how small the Icelandic community actually is - although the residents don't necessarily know each other directly, they do belong to overlapping groups. Just as Iceland is a microcosm of the world's DNA, so it presents a laboratory of crime.

For the second title in a row Indridason's grumpy detective Erlendur has gone missing. (See OUTRAGE). This leaves his team to their own devices a bit, and Sigurdur Óli is not a team man at the best. A school reunion leads to him investigating a blackmailing case for an old school friend, his mother persuades him to look into the daily pilfering of an elderly show more friend's newspapers, and when a tramp comes looking for Erlendur he decides to follow up himself.

Sigurdur Óli is a very human detective who quite often makes mistakes and at least twice in BLACK SKIES he realises that he has woven events together in the wrong way and leapt to the wrong conclusions. Nor does he reveal to the rest of the team what he is up when he really does need help. He always seems to keep back little bits of information that he should be sharing. On the other hand he is what I think of as a fractal investigator, seeing small leads as worth investigating and that is partly what makes this book such a good read, as he goes off in directions the reader has not contemplated.

Having said that, I think I ready now for Erlendur to return, or to at least find out what has happened to him. His absence is a device that the author can surely sustain only for a couple of novels. In OUTRAGE it gave readers the opportunity to become better acquainted with Elinborg, and in BLACK SKIES with Sigurdur Óli. Of course, one of the advantages of this ploy is that a reader new to Indridason does not have to worry about not having read the earlier novels in the series.

There is a strong sense of setting in BLACK SKIES, not just the Icelandic setting, with characters known by single names, but also an explanation of the events that eventually lead to the global financial crisis and the collapse of the Icelandic economy. Like many contemporary crime fiction authors Indridason has embedded strong social comment in the novel. show less

The first Erlendur mystery I listened to was Strange Shores, but it was good enough to make me seek the earlier volumes. I like Erlendur and Elinborg well enough, but I've never liked Sigurdur Óli, whom I regard as an insensitive jerk.

Despite the fact that Sigurdur Óli is the main character in this entry, it's very good. I particularly enjoyed learning about what was going on with banking and the Icelandic economy just before the Wall Street Crash of 2008. We learn some things about Sigurdur Óli's family and childhood that help explain why he's such a jerk. He actually experiences a moment of enlightenment that suggests he might improve in the future.

I understand, but don't condone another police officer's reaction to Iceland's show more lenient treatment of persons who commit brutal beatings. Sigurdur Óli's attitude was not what I expected from him.

The subplot of Andres the alcoholic with the tragic past from Artic Chill is dealt with here. The way he handled his former abuser isn't right for real life, but does nicely for fiction. (Well, it did for this former victim of much milder child sexual abuse. I don't know if a reader who wasn't molested would get any satisfaction from it.) show less

In Black Skies, the spotlight falls upon Erlendur's unlikeable off-sider, Sigurdur Oli. Trying to help a friend facing blackmail, Oli winds up caught in a web of corruption, sexual depravity and murder. As expected, the story is well-paced, rivetting stuff, and goes some way towards humanising the arrogant Oli. But reading a Reykjavik mystery without Erlendur is a bit like going to a Rolling Stones concert without Mick Jagger onstage. I for one hope our 'hero' returns from the fjords in Indridason's next installment.