The Nature of Things

Black Skies by Arnaldur Indriðason My rating: 3 of 5 stars If Sigurður Óli lived in 2016 America, he'd be a yuge Donald Trump supporter. He would attend the rallies (probably wearing a tee shirt with the Confederate flag emblazoned on it) and would happily participate in the evicting and maybe roughing up of any protesters or Muslims who dare to show up. He is an angry right-winger who is dissatisfied with the way Icelandic society is going. It's letting in too many immigrants. It's providing too strong a safety net. It's too soft on crime. That last one is the one that really gets his goat, because he is with the Reykjavik police, which forces him to place constraints on his basest - and racist - instincts. His ideal is America. He attended police academy in America. His favorite place for a vacation is Orlando, Florida. He loves American television and American sports, especially baseball and football. He is enthralled by American capitalism and by the young tycoons...

Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriðason My rating: 3 of 5 stars The title Hypothermia could refer to a tragic incident in Inspector Erlendur's childhood when he and his younger brother were lost in a sudden blizzard while out helping their father look for the family's sheep. The two brothers became separated in the storm and the younger one was never found. He was presumed dead. Erlendur survived - barely. He was covered by several feet of snow and suffering from hypothermia and frostbite when found, but the searchers were able to save him. The title could also refer to a technique of deliberately lowering the body's temperature to the point that the heart stops and the person is clinically dead. If not too much time has passed, the person can then be revived by medical personnel and brought back to life. Supposedly, while the person is "dead," he can visit "the other side" and see what, if anything, waits for us there. As it turns out, such a medical exper...

Outrage by Arnaldur Indriðason My rating: 4 of 5 stars When I last checked in on Arnaldur Indriðason's Icelandic detective series featuring Inspector Erlendur, I was so irritated with his main character that I swore off him for a while and considered making it permanent. But then... I had this book on my Kindle and in the interest of clearing my reading queue, I decided to read it. I'm glad I did. The best thing about the book is that Erlendur doesn't appear in it! That dour, surly, and grim police detective who gives gruff, austere Scandinavian police detectives like Wallander and Hole a bad name, is truly one of the most completely unlikable main characters I've encountered in detective fiction. So, it was a relief not to have to deal with him this time. We find that Erlendur has gone off on leave, apparently chasing the ghosts that haunt his life, and, instead, we have his colleague Elinborg heading up the investigations. Now, Elinborg is just about the polar opposi...

Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indriðason My rating: 3 of 5 stars I'm being generous in giving this book three stars. Two-and-a-half would probably be closer to the mark. I think much of my problem with the book lay with its translation which seemed particularly ungainly and clumsy. So, I guess I'm giving the book the benefit of a doubt in thinking that I might have liked it better if I could have read it in the original Icelandic. I don't think I would have liked Inspector Erlendur any better though. Really, every time I begin to warm up to the man, he does something stupid and outrageous which just makes me want to punch him in the face. He suddenly gets hostile and angry for no apparent good reason. He is cold toward his adult children who just want him to be a part of their lives. He makes assumptions about people and evidence presented to him on his cases - assumptions which blind him to being able to see clues that are right in front of his face. Frankly, he's not a ve...

The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indriðason My rating: 4 of 5 stars I'm glad I stuck with this series of Icelandic mysteries by Arnaldur Indriðason, even though I found the first two entries rather disappointing. This third in the series began to live up to my hopes for it with a dynamic plot and some interesting characters that made me want to know more about them. It also featured a look back at the Cold War of the late 1950s and the constant spying that seems to have been a part of daily life in Eastern European countries of that time. Once again we meet that morose fellow, the thoroughly uncharismatic Inspector Erlendur of the Reykjavik Police. He's as messed up as ever as he continues to be haunted by the presumed death of his younger brother when they were children. The brother disappeared in a blizzard and was never found. This touchstone event of Erlendur's life has given him an obsession with long-cold missing person cases. In The Draining Lake he has another one. I...

Voices by Arnaldur Indriðason My rating: 2 of 5 stars I've read two earlier books in Indriðason's Inspector Erlendur of Reykjavik series and found them intriguing, if uneven. I was interested to continue with the series and see how it develops, but this third book in the series to be translated into English did not show much development at all. Indeed, the recurring characters all seem to have reached a point of stasis. Inspector Erlendur mopes and dwells upon the dark side of life. He is haunted by the death of his eight-year-old brother in a blizzard when he (Erlendur) was ten. He blames himself and cannot forgive himself and it makes him angry and unable to relate to other people. Including his two grown children. We again meet his daughter, Eva Lind, who survived the trauma she suffered in the last book when she lost her baby and almost died herself. She is miserable and trying to stay straight and clean of drugs, but it seems to be a losing battle. She is very angry with ...

Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indriðason My rating: 4 of 5 stars Jar City , the first mystery by Icelandic author Arnaldur Indriðason that features Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson of the Reykyavik police, traced the origins of a modern-day murder to a heinous crime that occurred some forty years before. The solution to the mystery turned on the idea of Iceland as a very insular society with a shallow genetic pool where most people are at least distantly related. In this second book in the series, we again get a very cold case - something that occurred during World War II. But was it truly a crime or simply a situation where justice was at last served? The story begins with the image of a baby gnawing on a human bone. A young medical student had dropped by a children's birthday party to pick up his young brother who was attending. As he sits waiting for the child to be ready to leave, he watches the honoree's younger sister who is gnawing on something that at first appears to b...