Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

#ReadAroundTheWorld. #Iceland

This is first in the Þóra Guðmundsdóttir (Thóra Gudmundsdóttir) series of Nordic Noir novels by Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. Set in Reykjavik in 2005, single mother and lawyer Þóra Guðmundsdóttir (Thóra Gudmundsdóttir) is approached by a wealthy German family to look into the recent death of their history student son Harold as they are unconvinced by the results of the police investigation.

Thóra is paired up with German Matthew Reich, who works for the family. The more Thóra looks into the life of Harold, the stranger things appear. Harold is obsessed with witchcraft, torture and witch hunts. He has also been researching the execution of Bishop Jón Arason, the last Catholic bishop of Iceland, who was beheaded in 1550, and searching the Old Norse manuscript collection of Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson. Harold and his group of friends get together to recreate dark rituals. The story touches on all sorts of things including sexual asphyxiation and body mutilation.

Sigurðardóttir creates both atmosphere and drama and paints a picture of Iceland. I’ve not read a lot of noir but I enjoyed Thóra as a character (apart from her diatribe about her secretary’s appearance) and would like to read more of this series. 4 stars.… (altro)

Thóra Guðmundsdóttir is a lawyer and single mother who is contacted by a family in Germany to investigate the death of their son while attending a graduate program in history at the university. This is not her area, as she is mostly a contract lawyer. But the money is good, and she has sympathy for the mother making the request.

The mystery revolves around the dead student's obsession with sorcery, black magic, and witch trials and much of the investigation involves trying to understand the manuscripts and history that the student was pursuing. It's not clear how many of these are based on actual documents. Thóra is joined by Matthew Reich, a representative of the student's family for the investigation. The author has imbued this German with an interesting sense of humor which provides some relief in a dark story.

Thóra's behavior in the novel seems to be a bit out of bounds for an attorney. And the dialogue is sometimes stilted.

I'm not sure if I'll read any of the rest of this series.… (altro)

This is the first of a series of novels featuring Freyja, who works with children and young people and Huldar, a detective who in this novel is newly promoted and well out of his comfort zone. But it's not the first I've read about these two, which is lucky, because I doubt if I'd have read more if it had been. It's clever, intricately plotted and the characters are well fleshed-out. But the more I read, the less I believed. Coincidence piled upon coincidence and the murders were committed in increasingly nasty ways. Having read one other in the series, I was eager to read another, but it'll be a while before I have the stomach to do so.… (altro)