Regular marked price: $14.00Discount Price: $11.20
Cost Savings: $2.80 (20%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.6935
EAN num: 9780312426385
ISBN number: 0312426380
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: October 01, 2005
Publishing house: Picador
Release Date: September 19, 2006
Sale Popularity Level: 35279
Studio: Picador
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
From Gold Dagger Award--winning author Arnaldur Indridason comes a Reykjavík thriller introducing Inspector Erlendur
When a lonely old man is found dead in his Reykjavík flat, the only clues are a cryptic note left by the killer and a photograph of a young girl's grave. Inspector Erlendur discovers that many years ago the victim was accused, but not convicted, of an unsolved crime, a rape. Did the old man's past come back to haunt him? As Erlendur reopens this very cold case, he follows a trail of unusual forensic evidence, uncovering secrets that are much larger than the murder of one old man.
An international sensation, the Inspector Erlendur series has sold more than two million copies worldwide.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
I read the book in Athens,during a hot , hot August with the city deserted. I carried the book with me everywhere, couldn't put it down even at work, slipped a few pages in, between sketching and drawing, I'm an architect.
Having read my share of British, French and American mystery novels, I was pleasantly surprised by the doric style of this Scandinavian sibling. Dense and profound, it released emotions in an escalating way, subdued at first, gripping and almost terrifying towards the end. And I'm sure that a travel guide couldn't do a better job at communicating the feeling of being in Iceland. Made me curious of that curious country!
I enjoyed it so much that I ordered " Silence of the grave " and will move on to " Voices". Great work!
Rated by buyers 
-
A complete pleasure. Count me a fan. Complex enough to be intersting and to keep me guessing. The daughter gets on my nerves - wouldn't mind if she gets killed off down the road take the x-wife too - getting rid of them would just add to the Noir quality of Erlindur's character. Loved the setting - Iceland completely new to me! I am a fan of mysteries set outside the USA. This completely worked for me.
Rated by buyers 
-
I'll say off the bat that I'm currently reading the sequel to Jar City, Silence of the Grave, and finding it pretty good. But Jar City: not so much.
Jar City isn't terrible, but it seems to me to suffer from two flaws. First, the plot is implausibly complex. The basic premise behind it--a kind of biomedical detective story--is clever enough. But the chain of evidence that leads the protagonist Erlendur ultimately to the murderer is torturous. Author Indridason himself must sense this, because he has Erlendur's subordinate cops, Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli, questioning the wisdom of their boss's dogged insistence on following up on flimsy clues. At the end of the day, Indridason wants to portray Erlendur as a sage cop with a good nose. But the reader, along with Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli, is left incredulous.
Second, the characters never really come alive. Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli have little more than walk-on roles, and Erlendur himself, a middle-aged man riddled with regrets and angst, never quite reveals himself to the reader. At the end of the novel, the impression he leaves is visual--rumpled suit and hair, muddy shoes, etc--rather than psychological. Even his relationship with his addict (and pregnant) daughter Eva Lind never quite develops. And since what seems to drive Erlendur in this case is empathy with a long-dead little girl who was an indirect victim of a crime, you'd think that Indridason would've more fully played out the relationship between father and daughter.
Still, perhaps Indridason intends to develop his characters incrementally as the series of novels describing their adventures unfolds. And the plot of Silence of the Grave so far seems much more plausible. So it's worth sticking with Indridason a while longer.
Rated by buyers -
Jar City and its sequel, Silence of the Grave, are dark, Scandanavian mysteries reflecting the dark dreary setting of Iceland when it's raining (which seems to be often). The lead detective, Erlendur, is badly divorced, possibly depressed, and disturbed by the events which seem to parallel his own pathetic personal life. The plots are complex and almost gripping. Both books are well translated from the Icelandic and are well worth reading. Just don't read them if you're feeling down.
Rated by buyers -
The plot was quite engaging, but compared to American mysteries, the pacing was rather slow and it was full of existentialist angst. Nonetheless, despite a certain bleakness (typified by every scene involving vast quantities of rain and the indoor scenes often involving unpleasant smells), I found this book one I couldn't wait to get back to.
The plot involves a man found dead in his smelly basement flat. An inspection of the flat reveals a photo hidden away. The photo is of a child's grave. For no obvious reason, the detective investigating the case decides this could well be a clue to who-did-it (rather than rely on boring things like finding a stranger who was seen by a neighbor). The police team finds out who the girl is and discover that many years ago, her mother had reported being raped by the man found dead. Thus an investigation begins into that crime so long ago.
There is a lot of emphasis on the unpleasant parts of life, including drug addiction. The relation between the detective and his family is truly awful, and I think I would have enjoyed the book better without that part. The stormy scenes between father and daughter (both very troubled people) simply seemed like unpleasant interruptions in an otherwise engaging story.
For better or worse, this mystery is quite unlike American mysteries even in the noir genre. And it's not typically European, or at least it's not like most British mysteries. I suppose it's closest to Scandinavian in style.
Still, I will be reading more in this series.
Find other books like this one:
