Books : Voices: A Thriller (Reykjavik Thriller)

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Author name: Arnaldur Indridason

: Voices: A Thriller (Reykjavik Thriller)
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.6934
EAN num: 9780312358716
ISBN number: 0312358717
Label: St. Martin's Minotaur
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Minotaur
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: October 02, 2007
Publishing house: St. Martin's Minotaur
Release Date: October 02, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 46189
Studio: St. Martin's Minotaur



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Editor's Notes and Comments:

Product Description:

Arnaldur Indridason took the international crime fiction scene by storm after winning England’s CWA Gold Dagger Award for Silence of the Grave. Now, with the highly anticipated Voices, this world-class sensation treats American readers to another extraordinary Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson thriller.

 

The Christmas rush is at its peak in a grand Reykjavík hotel when Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson is called in to investigate a murder. The hotel Santa has been stabbed, and Erlendur and his detective colleagues have no shortage of suspects between hotel staff and the international travelers staying for the holidays.

 

But then a shocking secret surfaces. As Christmas Day approaches, Erlendur must deal with his difficult daughter, pursue a possible romantic interest, and untangle a long-buried web of malice and greed to find the murderer.

 

One of Indridason’s most accomplished works to date, Voices is sure to win him a multitude of new American suspense fans.





Customer Reviews
User popularity level: out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Dark and funny
This book is so well-written. Sorry to hear the translator has died. This is my very first Indridason book, and I look forward to reading the rest. Erlendur's character is quite compelling. Also, even though the whole set-up is quite sordid and depressing, there are comic touches. Highly recommended - not your usual holiday mystery!


Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - "It's quite a changed world. More brutal."


At a luxury hotel in Iceland, the Grand Reykjavik, the cold climate belies a hotbed of illicit activities. Just before Christmas, when the hotel's Santa is found murdered and in a compromising position, it is up to Inspector Erlendur to discover the many layers of deceit shielded by everyday business in the hotel. Gudlauger, the unfortunate Santa, dies of multiple stab wounds, the fatal one directly in his heart. His spartan, cramped room yields little in the way of clues, save a few old records. The hotel's doorman as well as annual Santa, Gudlauger kept to himself, living under the radar virtually unnoticed by most guests and coworkers. In the days prior to the holiday, Erlendur and his assistants, Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg, assemble fragments of information that will ultimately point to the culprit. Meanwhile, Erlendur checks into a chilly hotel room for the duration of his investigation.

Given the reputation of the hotel and its booking of holiday visitors, rather than close the facilities, Erlendur focuses on the staff and the few connections he can make to a solitary man who exists on the edges of obscurity. Most employees admit they recognize Gudlauger- he is, after all, the doorman- but few have any intimate knowledge of this employee. At least that is the façade various individuals present to the inspector; over time he unravels ties that are criminal if not overtly sinister. Much illegal business may be transacted in the hotel, the usual unsavory activities indulged in when visitors are removed from their familiar environment. Erlendur is eccentric, as well, a private, lonely man who spends his off hours reading about "death and ordeals", a concession to his troubled childhood, at times attempting to reestablish a connection with his presently-drug free daughter who battles drug addiction and self-destructive behavior.

Stumbling across an opportunity for a relationship, Erlendur makes clumsy attempts to reach out to a new lady, a department employee performing an ancillary task within the investigation, but he is hampered by his own self-doubts and inadequacies, a condition that renders the inspector sometime obliquely charming, at others simply obtuse. Through Erlendur and Gudlauger, this prize-winning writer offers an intimate perspective on a small country in a cosmopolitan setting, but the detective, murdered and murderer are compelling for their personal histories, a confluence of personalities in search of meaning in an often painful world. The author mines this diverse and fertile field with focused precision, a man viciously murdered, a troubled detective and a cast of bizarre characters, a narrative on the nature of loss, disappointment and rejection, tempered with brief bouts of hope. Luan Gaines/ 2008.



Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Bound by our pasts
This is the third Inspector Erlendur novel I've read, and it's the best. Indridason is slowly fleshing out his characters--Erlendur, the dour inspector, his two sidekicks, the big-hearted and no-nonsense Elinborg and the impatient cop-on-the-rise Sigurdur Oli, the fragile and mercurial Eva Lind, Erlendur's daughter--to show their complexity. His plots are growing less contrived (Jar City's plot was baroque in its needless complexity). In short, he is mastering his chosen genre.

But I don't really read his novels because they're mysteries. I'm not a big mystery fan. I read Indridason because his explorations of the inner worlds of his characters, and especially Erlendur, are sophisticated and insightful. He is, to use an outdated word, an existentialist novelist who tries to figure out what it means to be human in a world that frequently seems absurd. One of his favorite themes is the way in which our past enslaves us, and the struggle it takes to break free.

In Voices, that theme comes through loud and clear. Erlendur begins to come to terms with his ghost-haunted past; in hearing Erlendur's ghost story, Eva Lind understands her own demons a bit better; the murder victim, Gulli, had been running from his past his whole life; and a subsidiary case of child abuse that Elinborg is working on once more illustrates the theme. Good stuff, the kind of writing that invites the reader to explore his or her own ghosts.

One bit of advice: read Indridason's books in sequence. They can be read out of order, but it's not a good idea. Much of what's going on with Erlendur in Voices depends on a knowledge of revelations made in the preceding volume Silence of the Grave.


Rated by buyers 2 out of 5 stars - My2Cents
This book is a let down from the stables of Arnaldur Indridason. The prose is good but the outcome and "mystery" were predictable. The twists and turns seem more like a Holywood script. I was pretty disappointed reading the book and I wouldn't venture into another book of the same genre for some time to come. Having said that Indridason still retains the edge when it comes to narration and prose. You never get bored but the edge of the seat feeling is gone. May be it is time for me to switch to another author who has similar knack when it comes to thrillers..


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - The Story Just Gets Better and Better as it Goes Along
When you read mysteries/thrillers written by Scandinavians you can feel the cold and darkness that they live in for a good portion of the year. More than any of the others, Iceland must be even more dreary, like living in Alaska (without all the fun). I can't imagine what it must have been like to live on this bleak island before there were phones, movies, cable and the internet. You get the feeling that the people who lived there thought of themselves as the living dead.

Even today, with the economy of Iceland (spelled Island in Icelandic) being at a level of middle class for most people, the cold and dark still looms over the people who live there. Iceland has one of the highest percentage of alcoholism and drugs use of any developed nation.

All of Arnaldur's (Icelanders use patronymics as last names and refer to each other by very first names only) characters seem to have the same problem as the criminals, that life has beaten them down. But I think that it's more the climate than anything else.

The beginning of the book seems to absorb this feeling of dreariness and only slowly builds to a conclusion, but that's what makes it so great. There are really three stories going on at once but they are woven so well that they done show separation for quite a long time. The pacing is absolutely brilliant.

One sad note: the translator for the very first three of Arnaldur's books was Bernard Scudder who died in late 2006. Scudder (who was English) had spent many years in Iceland (his wife and two daughters are Icelandic) and did a phenomenal job of translation. He will be sorely missed.

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