#Blogtour #Review - The Dancer by Óskar Guðmundsson

The Dancer

Óskar Guðmundsson (translated by Quentin Bates)
Corylus Books, 5 January 2024 (e), 1 February 2024(pb)
Available as: PB, pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781739298951

I'm grateful to Corylus Books for sending me a copy of The Dancer to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

My review

Óskar Guðmundsson's The Dancer is a police procedural set in Reykjavík in 1982, a departure from present-day Icelandic crime allowing the detectives to be out of touch and unable to email one another (they use faxes instead!)

In many respects it's less a mystery than an exploration of motives and psychology. In a grotesque opening scene, a man is killed. We soon develop a good idea of who carried out the deeply strange crime (and I can't emphasise enough how strange!) but not why, nor how it relates to another death that soon turns up.

The focus turns to a young man, Tony, whose housebound mother is seen in various flashbacks to have been abusive to him. It's not clear whether he's repaying her now, or how Tony's obsession with dancing fits in (I was struck by the way he's able to basically walk into the National Theatre and claim a part in a ballet that's being rehearsed - a nice degree of informality there!) Either way, the relationship between mother and son seems wrong somehow - why is Tony keeping her drugged?

The murders are being investigated by Ylfa, a young detective, and her more experienced boss Valdimar. These two are likeable, down to earth protagonists, but there is less focus on them than on Tony's spiralling problems - while something is made of Ylfa's domestic issues, and Valdimar's health, it felt to me more as though these two were more being set up for future books.  That is fine, because Tony is a complex and involving protagonist, a nuanced character who needs space for the reader to get to know him. I won't pretend I found him easy to like, but he does deserve some sympathy - he has a troubled background and, as we are shown, he's a man who feels something of an outsider. The narrative around him isn't always straightforward - I'm choosing my words with care because I don't want to spoil things, I'll just say that from the founding event that drives the narrative, themes of trust, fraud and self-delusion abound.

All in all a satisfying read, and a very dark one. Quentin Bates's translation does credit to the narrative - I think there must have been some tricky aspects to this (such as the dancing terminology, and the quick shifts from one point of view to another, which leave the reader, for a moment, unsure whether the next scene is a continuation or not) but these are all ably addressed and the English text is great to read.

About the book

Life was never going to be a bed of roses… 

Tony is a young man who has always been on the losing side in life. He was brought up by his troubled, alcoholic mother who had a past of her own as a talented ballerina, until a life-changing accident brought her dreams to a sudden end. As her own ambitions for fame and success were crushed, she used cruel and brutal methods to project them onto her young son – with devastating consequences.

There’s no doubt that a body found on Reykjavík’s Öskjuhlíð hillside has been there for a long time. The case is handed to veteran detective Valdimar, supported by Ylfa, who is taking her tentative first steps as a police officer with the city’s CID while coping with her own family difficulties.

It’s not long before it’s clear a vicious killer is on the loose - and very little about the case is what it appears to be at first glance.

The Dancer was originally published in 2023 as a Storytel Original Series 

About the author

With a unique voice and a style that doesn’t shy away from a sometime graphic take on shocking subject matter, Óskar Guðmundsson is one of the rising stars of the Icelandic crime fiction scene. His debut Hilma was awarded the Icelandic Crime Syndicate’s Drop of Blood award for the best crime novel of 2015, and the TV rights have been acquired by Sagafilm. This was followed by a sequel Blood Angels in 2018. The first of his books published in an English translation, The Commandments, was a standalone novel which appeared in Iceland in 2019. All of Óskar’s books have been bestsellers and rewarded with outstanding reviews. 

The first in a new series of novels The Dancer was published in Icelandic simultaneously as an eBook, audiobook, and paperback - accompanied by an original song in which Óskar’s words have been put to music featuring some of Iceland’s leading musicians - and was an immediate bestseller. Óskar’s talents don’t end there, as he is also an artist and has held a number of exhibitions of his work.

About the translator

Quentin Bates has personal and professional roots in Iceland that go very deep. He is an author of series of nine crime novels and novellas featuring the Reykjavik detective Gunnhildur (Gunna) Gísladóttir. In addition to his own fiction, he has translated many works of Iceland’s coolest writers into English, including books by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Guðlaugur Arason, Einar Kárason, Óskar Guðmundsson, Sólveig Pálsdóttir, Jónína Leosdottir and Ragnar Jónasson. Quentin was instrumental in launching Iceland Noir in 2013, the crime fiction festival in Reykjavik.

For more information about The Dancer, see the publisher's website here or their Facebook here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Dancer from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.