#Blogtour Review - White as Snow by Lilja Sigurðardóttir

White as Snow (An Áróra Investigation, No 3) 
Lilja Sigurðardóttir (translated by Quentin Bates)
Orenda Books, 12 October 2023
Available as: PB, 276pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB/ PB): 

I'm grateful to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the blogtour for White as Snow and for sending me a copy of the book to consider for review.

It was a great pleasure to return to the Reykjavik of maverick financial investigator Áróra and police detective detective Daniel, in a story that very much picks up the thread of the previous book, Red As Blood.

Some months on fro the end of that story, Áróra is still hunting for her vanished sister but seems to be making little progress. Daniel almost finds he has too much family on his hands when his ex sends their two kids to stay, just as a major investigation kicks off. I enjoyed the awkwardness Daniel displays trying to look after two teens who are clearly feeling a bit uprooted and inclined to resort to moods and monosyllables - through they are brought out of themselves when they meet Daniel's drag queen neighbour, Lady Gúgúlú. 

Daniel and his colleagues are investigating people traffickers who have abandoned a shipping container in which are the bodies of several young women. The story - one can almost smell its repressed anger coil from the pages - follows one of the trafficked women, dipping backwards and forwards to show how and why she ended up where she did. It exploits the same rackety side of Ireland that earlier books in the series established, replete with sinister foreign gangsters and their Icelandic collaborators.

I enjoyed the balance between the crime plot here and the personal. Daniel and Áróra may, or may not, be finding their way towards a relationship, though neither is one to rush these things and it's all complicated by Daniel's recommending Áróra to Erín, another of his exes, who is having issues of her own with a boyfriend who may not be what he seems. Áróra is perhaps less central here than in the previous books, with Daniel more prominent.

We also see Helena, Daniel's colleague, wrestling with the tension between no-strings fun and having someone special in her life. All in all it's quite the romantic dance that takes place alongside the investigation of the crime. For me, that creates a unique atmosphere, tender moments and episodes of yearning and self doubt juxtaposed with the realities of 21st century crime, its pitiless nature established early with those scenes of the shipping container. It also creates tension - there are high stakes here with favourite characters potentially in jeopardy and the insidious coils of organised crime spreading throughout the city.

It's a fine, tense and engaging story. As ever, Quentin Bates's translation doesn't get in the way, it lets the reader understand what's going on without smoothing away the fact that this is a story with a foreign setting. I hope there will soon be more to come. 

For more information about White as Snow, see the publisher's website here (where you can also buy it) and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can also buy White as Snow from your local highstreet bookshop, or online from Hive Books or Bookshop UK as well as the usual Blackwell's, Foyles, Waterstones, WH Smith and Amazon.