Books : Voices: A Reykjavik Thriller

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Author name: Arnaldur Indridason

: Voices: A Reykjavik Thriller
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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780312428068
ISBN number: 0312428065
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: September 02, 2008
Publishing house: Picador
Release Date: September 02, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 20260
Studio: Picador



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Product Description:

Inspector Erlendur Returns In this Award-winning International Bestseller.

The Christmas rush is at its peak in a grand Reykjavík hotel when Inspector Erlendur is called in to investigate a murder. The hotel Santa has been stabbed to death, and Erlendur and his fellow detectives find no shortage of suspects between the hotel staff and the international travelers staying for the holidays. 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. Voices is a brutal, soulful noir from the chilly shores of Iceland.

 





Customer Reviews
User popularity level: out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - wonderful
This is a beautifully crafted gem of a novel. Its parallel stories and terse style create a story that goes straight to the heart of a believable crime entwined in disturbing social and family issues. Detective Erlendur, who is distant in the initial book, evolves into a complex and sympathetic character. Arnaldur skillfully uses space, physical and psychological, to draw the reader into a haunting story.

Although this book has the same translator as Jar City does, I found this story much more readable; the British slang is less intrusive.


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Total page-turner spell-binder
If you haven't read Arnaldur Indridason's mysteries, you're in for a major treat. This artist knows how to tell a story, weave in plots and sub-plots, create characters who are so real and compelling, he will keep you up at night or keep you turning the pages until you're at the last page.

I'm thrilled his latest mystery is out and I'm going to stop writing here so I can order it pronto.


Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - Icelandic noir
It is the week before Christmas and we are in the far north, almost guaranteed a snowy, white holiday. But it you looking for a cozy mystery, perhaps you should look elsewhere, because this book would seem to fall distinctly in the category of 'noir', defined in Merriam-Webster as "crime fiction featuring hard-boiled cynical characters and bleak sleazy settings." Yes, cynical...and yes, bleak...and in "Voices" that is a very enjoyable combination for the reader.

The holidays are approaching, and in the basement of Iceland's very popular Grand Reykjavik Hotel, a body has been found. The victim of the brutal stabbing is the hotel's doorman, discovered half dressed in the suit he was going to wear to play Santa at an employee party. Found with his pants down around his ankles, in a very compromising position, in the nasty, empty little room in which he lived. Called in to investigate is Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson and his team, each with their own very distinct personalities. Erlendur is himself a rather bleak yet compelling character. Divorced for decades, alone, almost a stranger to his two now grown, troubled children, he might seem at very first an unlikely sympathetic character. But as with all the folks here, we learn that what we at very first see is not all there is to the story.

For example, Erlendur is still haunted by the death of his younger brother when they were both just children, the boy lost forever on a snowy Icelandic moor, while Erlendur was found and saved.

"He was older and was responsible for his sibling. It had always been that way. He had taken care of him. In all their games. When they were home alone. When they were sent off on errands. He had lived up to those expectations. On this occasion he had failed, and perhaps he did not deserve to be saved since his brother had died. He didn't know why he had survived. But he sometimes thought it would have been better if he were the one lying lost on the moor."

That death and his sense of responsibility for it has colored ever aspect of his life since and is perhaps one reason he find himself at an almost total loss as to how to deal with his own daughter Eva Lind, a drug addict, suffering her own guilt over the death of her prematurely born daughter. But it is also why he is so dedicated to his job.
And besides the murder, there is also woven through the book another little subplot of a young boy who has been very severely beaten, maybe by his father. But again, there is more to this than meets the eye at first.
Yes, there is a lot of angst in beautiful, snowy Iceland this Christmas.

While the story and the setting and the writing itself are spare and a bit bleak, the author's great ability to develop these characters, including even the victim, and a glimpse of Icelandic culture, raises what might otherwise be an ordinary police procedural to another level. The third in a series, along with 'Jar City' and 'Silence of the Grave', 'Voices' is a very fine stand alone mystery. I know that I will be going back and reading the previous two and then will catch up on the latest, 'The Draining Lake'.

Now if I could just get the hang of these Icelandic names.....


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