Blogtour Review - The Murder Pool by Stella Blómkvist

The Murder Pool
Stella Blómkvist (trans Quentin Bates)
Corylus Books, 5 March 2026 
Available as: PB, 296pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781917586252

I'm grateful to Ewa for sending me a copy of The Murder Pool to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

In this latest instalment of the adventures of Stella Blómkvist - Icelandic lawyer and detective - written by Stella Blómkvist - mysterious Icelandic author - the cases come think and fast for Stella.

She’s asked to defend a young man accused of the murder of renowned painter “The Splasher” Kristinn Ófeigsson. Gunnar had been sitting for Ófeigsson who was known for his risqué works depicting scantily dressed young Viking hunks. Now Gunnar is accused of setting about The Splasher with an axe.

In addition to that, Stella is helping out her partner Rannveig, a documentary producer. One of Rannveig's colleagues is putting together an exposé of an abuser with high political connections - and some one seems to be leaning on the broadcaster to squash the story

Then there’s a senior policeman accused of corruption by a colleague with whom Stella’s crossed swords in the past. 

And more besides.

These books are always rapidfire with multiple threads, twists and plenty of plot, but this time, Blómkvist - the author - has, I think, surpassed herself. The result is a busy, even hectic story where nothing stands still for long. All through, it's regularly punctuated by Stella herself with an "Ooof!" when she encounters a setback, discovers something surprising or has an insight. The effect is rather like a series of punches, drumming home an insistent, dramatic rhythm in this enthralling and fast-paced book.

That’s a reflection I think of Stella (the character) herself who has always had many plates juggling. But in this book she not only has crime to address but some chewy personal issues besides, and I began to wonder if it would all be too much. I’ve always felt that the tough talking, wisecracking Stella of the novels might be something of a front for a woman who has things at the back of her mind she’d rather not examine too closely. Overloading herself with work might just be another way to avoid that. Are we seeing Stella on the edge of crisis? 

Maybe. If so, it doesn’t hinder her from tackling her multiple cases. She draws on all the resources she has - her forensic skills, dismantling opponents in the courtroom, her press contacts and her sheer nerve. (Stella even, in one scene, marches into the Prime Minister's office to threaten consequences - a reminder that Iceland is a smaller country where everyone knows everyone, or at least their cousin).

It’s an engaging, dense story that leads back to the prisons of Bangkok and to the Reykjavik underworld, building on events and characters of previous books - nothing in Stella’s world is ever totally done with - to build a picture of rackets and dodgy dealing. Stella B is a brilliant person to have in her corner, and she comes through for her clients. By the end of the book though I thought I saw  change coming for her. As I said, in these books nothing is ever done done.

As with the previous books in the series, Quentin Bates' translation is sharp and pacy, creating excellent readable English while preserving some lumps and bumps in the language (those nicknames?) that show the story's origin in a different language. Great fun to read.

Recommended. I’m eager to see what the next book brings... 

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

You can buy The Murder Pool from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones.

#Blogtour #Review - Black as Death by Lilja Sigurðardóttir

Black as Death (Áróra Investigates, 5)
Lilja Sigurðardóttir (trans by Lorenza Garcia)
Orenda Books, 23 October 2025 
Available as: PB, 225pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788848

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for sending me a copy of Black as Death to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

I read this excellent book with a degree of sadness because it is the last in the Áróra Investigates series. Of course the set up - Áróra has returned to Iceland to look for her missing sister Isafold, so her adventures from book to book, that quest aside, are somewhat secondary - meant that once the mystery of Isafold was solved, Áróra would probably move on. 

In the previous book, Dark as Night, Isafold's body was discovered so I knew what was coming. But I'm still sad!

At least - fortunately for the reader, if not for poor Isafold and her sister - some doubts remained about the circumstances of her death, so there is at least this final part to the sequence. And in tying them up, Sigurðardóttir gives us a final, spectacular conclusion to the story, a book to keep you reading till into the night as we hear Isafold's sad story in her own words, even while Áróra and her friends and colleagues struggle to join the dots.

Be warned - if issues of domestic abuse and coercive control are triggering for you, you may prefer to look away, because Isafold's story is, sadly, an example of this. While that was implicit in what we already knew, the chapters in Isafold's voice here are harrowing, the more so, I think, because we already know the outcome. What we don't know, of course, is exactly how she, her abusive boyfriend, Björn, actually died. The solution to that will tie into a present-day narrative that Áróra & Co unravel, a mixture of money-laundering, smuggling and criminality in the shadier parts of the city. It's a gripping and complex tale in itself - a generous gift really from Sigurðardóttir because now she's built up her protagonists (Áróra herself, Daníel, Helena and of course the fabulous Lady Gúgúlú) into such real and complex personalities, frankly I could just read about them all day, I don't need plot, all I need is to see these wonderful characters revolve around each other.

As they do. All their stories advance, and they're all left on cliff edges (though not perilous ones). We want to know more, and maybe one day we will.  The book would be compulsive if that's all there was to it. But as I said, there is more, the crime plot here murkier than ever, the twists handbrake-grade and the peril (for some) real. For her last adventure, Áróra really has something to get her teeth into - which is good for her because otherwise the sense of loss, of guilt, that now catches up with her might be just too much. Certainly her normal distraction - lifting weights at The Gym - isn't enough any more, so she throws herself into the case.

Perhaps too much...

All in all a magnificent ending to this series and a fantastic crime novel. And one well served by Lorenza Garcia's translation, giving us an English text that hums along. I'm so grateful to translators who provide a window into other languages and cultures, as Garcia does here.

For more information about Black as Death, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Black as Death from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith (always Smith's in my heart!) or Waterstones.

Blogtour Review - A Lethal Legacy by Guðrún Gúðlaugsdóttir

A Lethal Legacy
Guðrún Gúðlaugsdóttir (trans Quentin Bates)
Corylus Books, 20 September 2025
Available as: PB, 234pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781917586023

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of A Lethal Legacy to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Nothing has changed at Bjargarlækur for as long as anyone can remember – so are moves to bring change to this remote farm in the Icelandic countryside a motive for murder? Three elderly siblings have lived more or less peacefully in this isolated place their whole lives, until Brynjólfur is found dead in his own bed. Called on to help out at the farm, freelance journalist Alma is far from certain that the old man died a natural death. Determined establish the facts of the matter, she finds herself caught up in a vicious family feud. Sisters Klara and Thórdís are unable to agree on the future of the farm, just as others with an interest in the place circle hungrily around them. Echoes of missed opportunities, lost love and age-old crimes surface as a reckoning takes a bitter toll on those left behind – and Alma struggles to get to the truth.

Journalist Alma and her husband Gunnar have just embarked on renovating the wreck of a house they've bought. However a most dramatic call from daughter Gunnhildur summons Alma away to a remote farmhouse. (One of the minor delights of this novel is how - from off, as it were - Gunnar, left back at home, continually reports to Alma that he's found a new problem - the floor, the windows, the heating - that will require either a tradesman he can't find, materials they hadn't budgeted for, or indeed, a complete change of plan about layout. But he never loses his enthusiasm! It'll all be fine!). Gunnhildur, a nurse who needed some time away from things after splitting from her boyfriend, reports that the elderly man she was caring for alongside his two sisters has been found dead. She worries she may be blamed for mixing up Brynjólfur's meds, and asks her mum to come out and support Gunnhildur and her own toddler daughter Una.

This is Alma's intro to the isolated community at Bjargarlækur. Soon she's in the thick of investigating Brynjólfur's death, partly to help Gunnhildur - though dear Daughter happily scarpers part way through the story as Boyfriend has appeared again - but mostly, one senses, from a prickling of her journalist's thumbs and from sheer burning curiosity.

It's a tangled tale that emerges. The siblings were at war with one another. Brynjólfur and Klara, one of the surviving sisters, wanted to preserve the farm and turn into a museum of old Iceland. In a country that has experienced rapid change one can see why this might be worthwhile. (Another of the joys of A Lethal Legacy is the glimpses of that older Iceland that we get in the stories from the sisters and some of their neighbours. One is left in no doubt how much these remote communities were required to be self-sufficient, and the echoes of that run forward to some extent into the present of the novel, with the police remote and the authorities slow to intervene in the escalating situation).

The other sister, Thórdís, was though dead set against the museum idea. Complicating the picture is the presence of a younger couple to whom the farm has been let, and who may or may not be a pair of ne'er do wells. All sorts of accusations are thrown - Slaughtering the sheep! Selling the cows! Brewing moonshine! Behind them are suspicions they may have their eyes on the place, perhaps in a stitch-up with local authorities.

Once the possibility of murder is added to this mix of family dissension, greed and a gossipy local community - a great deal is to be gleaned from the local priest and the doctor - and Alma's shut in at the lonely, slightly spooky, house - one may well expect almost anything to happen. And there is drama. The sense though that something is rubbing under the surface is an even greater source of tension, the contrast with the bleak, static landscape and the changeless decades that the siblings have lived at Bjargarlækur only adding to this.

Is that impression of calm, of retreat, misleading though? 

At its heart a story of family secrets, A Lethal Legacy manages to be both truly Gothic, with the possibility that not everything going in totally natural, and also a fine, taut crime thriller. Alma's rather out on a limb in conducting any sort of investigation here and she lacks institutional backing to ask questions or poke around, having to rely on the sisters' goodwill (which is in short supply) and her de facto position as their nurse/ carer, to gather facts. 

As she does so it slowly becomes apparent that there is more going on here than you'd expect. With a parallel strand of the story focussing on possible past abuse affecting a member of her own family, and the differing attitudes of the sisters resulting in contradictory accounts of their earlier lives, there's a difficult jigsaw for Alma to assemble. She is, though, nothing if not determined.

I really enjoyed this story. The brooding, remote setting is a fitting location for dark deeds. Klara and Thórdís are magnificent characters, well drawn. Neither is exactly likeable - though by the end of the book one knows enough about them to forgive a lot - but they are a great double act. Alma is determined to reach the truth, at first to protect her daughter, but later, it seems, from sheer bloody-mindedness. And as I've said, the glimpses of Icelandic history and culture are fascinating.

As ever, Quentin Bates' translation sparkles, catching the very different characters of the individuals at the heart of this story through their speech - sometimes slangy and modern, at others more formal or even slightly outdated. He does this while navigating a lot of rather abstruse language describing funeral customs - wakes, lyings-in, funeral meats and such - laying clear subtle differences which matter to Klara and Thórdís. A lot of the background here would be known to the Icelandic reader and so it isn't explicitly set out, but the translation makes clear where everyone is coming from, as it were.

Great fun - and also in some aspects, very sad. I'd recommend this one strongly.

For more information about A Lethal Legacy, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy A Lethal Legacy from your local high street bookshop or online from Amazon.

Blogtour review - The Great Deception by Syd Moore

The Great Deception (Section W)
Syd Moore
Magpie (Oneworld), 4 September 2025
Available as: PB, 328pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780861548PB

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of The Great Deception to consider for review, and to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Sequel to The Grand Illusion, The Great Deception is Moore's continuation of the story of Daphne Devine. As prequels set several decades before her Essex Witches novels, I simply had to read to these book, and they don't disappoint.

The Great Deception finds Daphne assigned on a dangerous mission in Iceland as part of her work for Section W, the branch of Second World War British military intelligence tasked with all things supernatural - or potentially supernatural. Here, the ostensible target is a clairvoyant, Karlsson, who may or may not be able to foretell the future and may or may not be passing secrets to the Germans. Britain has occupied Ireland to prevent it being used as a German base, but the position of the island hangs in the balance, so anything that could tip things one way or another might be very important.

The story intrigues in a number of ways. First, Daphne herself, as Moore draws her, is a fascinating character, a very strong and strong-minded woman in an age which is still deeply, deeply patriarchal. The officers with whom she deals here are clearly not comfortable with an intelligent, assertive woman and even Septimus, who will be important to her future, doesn't treat her well. Yet Daphne persists. Next, this is a genuinely interesting and eye-opening exploration of a little known aspect of WW2. The whole occupation of Iceland, going rather against the grain of the early war, raises intriguing questions of power and collaboration which we normally see from a rather different perspective. The situation of Iceland itself is also interesting, a very poor country at the time and also a remote one but not, of course, subject to the same restrictions (or to attacks) as Britain itself so rather a haven for Daphne.

Finally, there's the whole magic/ supernatural angle. Books about WW2 magic are starting to appear in numbers, I think perhaps Syd Moore set a trend here, but readers of the earlier story and of course the Essex Witch novels will know that this author is then canny about how she uses the idea of magic. You never quite know what to believe - and that goes as much for Daphne as for us!

So when Daphne decides - and she does take the decision, in the end she choose not to trust the chain of command - that urgent action is needed, and forms her own small taskforce to undertake it, much of the focus in the story is on the material factors: the cold, availability of food, the strained relations between Daphne, her local contact Anna, their minder Björn and of course Karlssen. Daphne's forced to pick her way through what is a tense and thriller-y novel, chasing down leads and pursuing the truth - all while surviving threats from Nazi agents and the condescension of her own superiors.

Whether there's a real supernatural threat is another thing entirely, but even here, Daphne has her instincts which, we know, have guided her before. In the land of the Northern Lights, and approaching a a region rumoured to be the home of dark magic and of evil, anything may be possible.

I really enjoyed The Great Deception. It's a story with great drive - you WILL keep turning these pages - and very solidly located in its time and place, as well as having a real element of jeopardy and danger. Daphne's wrestling with guilt at some of the things she's done and at other she may have to: and there is business here that she darkly accepts she will have to deal with later, once the immediate danger is over. The story is also though, in places, very funny! 

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

You can buy The Great Deception from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.

Blogtour review - Home Before Dark by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Home Before Dark 
Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (trans Victoria Cribb)
Orenda Books, 17 July 2025
Available as: HB, 300pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781916788602

I'm grateful to Orenda for sending me a copy of Home Before Dark to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

In this new standalone psychological crime novel, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir introduces us to troubled Marsí. In 1977, Marsí dreads the tenth anniversary of her older sister, Stína, disappearing into the Icelandic night. 

Marsí has always blamed herself for Stína's loss, because 14 year old Marsí, was conducting an illicit correspondence with a penpal - using Stína's name.

And on the night Stína vanished, Marsí had arranged to meet him...

The first thing to say about this novel is that - as the title hints - it is dark, dark, dark. The setting is almost gothic, the isolated town, and the even more isolated farmstead where Marsí's family still live, breathing suppressed secrets and decades old grief. Marsí's dad makes his living by farming hens, the miserable lives of the poor creatures in their close confinement adding suffering from which she shrinks, and her mum sits in the house drinking alone, mourning her lost career as an actress.

Marsí has her own problems - not all related to the trauma and guilt of losing her sister - and Ægisdóttir cleverly cuts between events of 1966/ 67 (seen from the perspective of each sister), and Marsí's life in 1977. She clearly has an eating disorder, something that goes unremarked in the 70s. Sometimes the two girls' accounts support each other, sometimes they contradict each other significantly. Add in that 70s Marsí is either misremembering, is imagining things, or is a very unreliable narrator indeed, and it's clear that Home Before Dark is a real puzzle box of a book, a story where nothing can be taken for granted and events need to be reconstructed, almost forensically.

All this, and Marsí begins receiving letters again from her former penpal, who now threatens to become her stalker.

I really enjoyed Home Before Dark. It's miles from the typical Icelandic crime mystery (not that I've anything against those!) in that here the investigation of the crime isn't the central thread of the story. Yes, Marsí does make a new attempt here to discover what happened in 1967. (Of course, everyone tells her to leave well alone). And - spoiler! - she does eventually succeed. And that has... consequences. But really, it's her journey to this knowledge - and the re animation of a whole series of relationships (friendships and enmities) from her teenage years, as well as the stirring of long buried family skeletons, that drive the story. Marsí herself emerges as a brilliantly portrayed character, at once very dislikable but also, ion her affliction and desperation, very vulnerable. I changed my mind more times about whether I found her sympathetic than in any book I've read for a long time. 

In best gothic fashion, Home Before Dark shows us one family tragedy, but hints at more. As we will eventually learn, behind the apparent catastrophe there are complex family dynamics and unhealed wounds. While the atmosphere of darkness grows, the detail is only revealed slowly, with plenty of time to get to know Marsí, Stína and their (rather strange) parents and circle of teenage friends (seen both in the 60s and, more grown up, later). Ægisdóttir also shows us bits of Icelandic history that are not normally explored in a contemporary crime novel. Some are just intriguing - like that fact that even in the 70s TV shut down on Thursday. Others are darker and look back to a more patriarchal, decidedly unmodern Iceland.

Though it all, Victoria Cribb's excellent translation captures mood and nuance, matching the gathering tension and keeping all the distinct voices clear and recognisable, with their idiosyncrasies and different identities.

 An excellent book, and a great escape from the current UK heatwave!

For more information about Home Before Dark, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Home Before Dark from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones.

Blogtour Review - Murder Tide by Stella Blómkvist

Muder Tide (Stella Blómkvist, 3)
Stella Blómkvist (trans Quentin Bates)
Corylus Books, 4 July 2025
Available as: PB, 220pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781917586016

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me advance access to an e-copy of Murder Tide to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

More Stella! One of the highlights of my summer, this new outing for the refreshingly unconventional Icelandic lawyer, and for her pseudonymous author, lived up to expectations. Stella - the lawyer - is thrown into a slew of cases which have her questioning her life choices and thinking of the future (and not just of the health of the Stella Fund). Stella - the author - has great fun putting her alter ego through the wringer, and misdirecting the readers.

Case 1. A prominent financier and politician is found drowned (the especially grisly drowning predicted by a psychic, who insists on sharing her visions with an annoyed Stella). The accused is a fisherman who lost his quota and trawler in the financial crisis and blames the dead "quota baron" for doing him down.

Case 2. A figure from Stella's past, a man she helped to put away for drug smuggling, now seeks her help to get him off serious charges.

Case 3. A young woman whose mother lodged sensitive family papers with Stella, turns up to claim them. Úlfhildur wants to know who her father is. This gets Stella ruminating about her own daughter and whether she ought to be able to track down her dad...

Behind these cases, a complex web of family relationships and wrongs - imagined and actual - to be unpicked.

Peppered throughout with the aphorisms and hard-earned wisdom of Stella's mum, Murder Tide is a fast moving and, at times, shocking, slice of Icelandic noir. One of Stella's cases will touch on organised crime and set formidable enemies on her trail. Another will expose a charlatan preacher who's in no hurry have his past laid bare. Politics, corruption and racketeering lurk in every shady corner - and danger too.

I thought this book brought us a much more reflective and sober (well, kind of sober!) Stella than in the previous two books in this series. She now has much to lose - not only her kid, Sóley Árdís, but her lover Rannveig. I sensed Stella regrets that now there are people she loves, her enemies have new ways to pressure her. Accustomed to sailing close to the line in her legal practice, and to bearing danger as she does so, Stella now faces new vulnerabilities. She may, even, whisper it, be growing up.

That doesn't, though, dampen her fighting spirit. Murder Tide is a book in which Stella has to use every trick, call in every favour, work every contact and be ever on her guard against the mysterious - yet also, hidden in plain sight - opponents with whom she's engaged.

Not all of them are where you'd expect.

And some are not above switching sides.

It makes for a switchback of a novel, a book where the battle lines are blurred and all is shades of grey. That's always been true of these novels of course but I think the evolution of Stella's personal life has raised the stakes here, as well as the dangers she faces. It's a short book, but one that is packed with incident and where the outcome is on a knife edge to the very end. Entertaining, mysterious and great, great fun to read.

As ever Quentin Bates' translation captures every nuance and tone in this twisty book, giving the different characters their due and sketching their place in Icelandic society without it sounding as though that's peopled by English types! It's unobtrusive but lucid, conveying the plot perfectly.

With a major plot thread left fizzing away, I am CERTAIN there will be a book 4 to follow soon and I can't wait for it.

For more information about Murder Tide, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Murder Tide from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones.

#Review - Dark as Night by Lilja Sigurðóttir

Dark as Night (Áróra Investigates)

Lilja Sigurðóttir (trans by Lorenza Garcia)
Orenda Books, 10 February 2024 
Available as: PB, 241pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788367

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for sending me a copy of Dark as Night  to consider for review.

I've become addicted to Sigurðóttir's fast-moving, involving series featuring Áróra and her group of friends and colleagues - Daníel, Helena and, of course, Daníel's tenant, drag queen Lady Gúgúlú.

In Dark as Night, all their lives are about to be shaken up and some answers given - though not perhaps ones we'd welcome. Áróra is still searching for her missing sister, but now news comes of a child who seems to be dead Ísafold reincarnated. And Gúgúlú has vanished din the night, leaving no word - but three menacing strangers are on her track. In both cases, Daníel finds his status as a policeman of little help.

Plus, Áróra's behaving erratically...

I love the moment in a series when he writer can trust the readers, and the characters, knowing that if things get a little strange, the latter will continue to enchant the former. The Áróra we see here isn't someone who, met for the first time, you'll necessarily want to know more about, but we have come to understand and like Áróra and so will be patient with a woman who's been through a lot. Similarly Gúgúlú has been a great support to Daníel while remaining on the margins of these stories so it's good to learn more about here, and indeed to learn things which rather blow open the nature of these stories. As to the latter, I felt there was always a bit more going on than the standard price procedural and it's good to have that confirmed, although I don't want to say too much for fear of spoilers. 

Through all this, the relationship between Áróra and Daníel continues to intrigue the reader and deepen at the same time. It's not an easy one - while she may be on the side of the angels she doesn't always play by the rules, and has her own secrets, which are straining things here - but a sense does come through of two people who are at bottom devoted to one another and that each will do anything for the other. (Given the kinds of threats which arise in Sigurðóttir's Idecalnd, the latter is perhaps more a matter of when, than if, some great sacrifice will be needed).

Lorenza Garcia's translation is excellent in what must have been a challenging task given the nature of some of the content, and I would love to ask a few questions about how certain things were tackled!

For more information about Dark as Night, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Shrouded by Sólveig Pálsdóttir

Shrouded (Ice and Crime, 7) 
Sólveig Pálsdóttir (translated by Quentin Bates)
Cory's Books, 25 July 2024e, 
Available as: PB, 270pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 97817392989-6-8 

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

This was a welcome return for the Ice and Crime series. Shrouded is the seventh book in the series but the fourth to have been published in English (so, there's more goodness to come!) and I hadn't realised until I started on it how much I've come to rely on having one of these in my life each year.

It's also a welcome return to Guðgeir Fransson and Elsa Guðrún, the detectives who have to identify the killer of reclusive, set-in-her-ways Arnhildur. The pair are now familiar bookfriends, and it was great catching up on their families and preoccupations.

So, to the murder... we see Arnhildur's death at the start of the novel, and a creepy set-up it is if ever there was one, involving a séance and a spooky graveyard at night. Once the investigation begins, the question inevitably arises - Is this the sort of woman one would expect to be at a séance - what brought her there, and who was the mysterious man she left with?

In fact, "spooky" is a good word to sum up this story. As the investigation proceeds on its scientific, 21st century course, we start to see glimpses of another, older Iceland, a country of different beliefs, of inherited abilities, a country that takes the weird in its stride. I was particularly struck that, while some of the characters here choose not to pursue that spooky side of things, nobody outright rejects it. The interplay between the two attitudes is fascinating, contributing to a sense that something is just a little bit off, a sense that builds into a rising tension as the story unfolds.

At the centre of that "spooky" strand is an unusual young man, the medium from the séance, who seems to be going through his own torment. Is he involved in the crime? Is he a charlatan? Or does he have insights that might help crack the case. If he does, they're certainly tormenting him. If he doesn't, surely his guilt is clear? Either way, he seems to know too much.

Through all this, a pattern of events gradually unfolds, a pattern rooted in the history of Arnhildur and her family. Drawing together old wrongs, a bitter feud over family property and a whole set of lives blighted by a tragic accident, the book illustrates - perhaps - the consequences of holding grievances and indulging in too much stubborn self-reliance. The story is, in the end, intricate, twisty, and, while I kind-of anticipated the penultimate twist, still surprising to the very end.

Apart from the intricacies of the crime itself, Shrouded has plenty of incident (and interest) as it records the lives of Guðgeir, Elsa and their families. It's actually rather comforting to see them going about their lives around the investigation, though a new strain of tension is added by Guðgeir's concerns about his and Elsa's boss, Særós, who's somehow slightly distracted and less meticulous than usual. What can be wrong, in such a well-ordered life?

Another excellent instalment in this series which gives us more than just mysteries, but also heart in its varied cast of characters and their complex lives. As ever, Quentin Bates's translation is crisp and readable, providing a good idiomatic read while still making it clear, with a distinct use of language, that we are not in Britain now.

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

You can buy Shrouded from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Blogtour - Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen

Thirty Days of Darkness
Jenny Lund Madsen (translated by Megan Turney)
Orenda Books, 9 May 2024, 
Available as: HB, PB, 321pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781914585623

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for sending me a copy of Thirty Days of Darkness to consider for review, and to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the book's Random Things blogtour.

I was so much looking forward to this one - even just from the cover (yes, I know, you mustn't judge a book by its cover, but who doesn't...) which delivered one of my favourite visual tropes, a lit window at night. The synopsis entices too - a literary author taking up the challenge to write crime, travelling to a remote corner of Iceland to do it, and stumbling across the real thing...

Hannah, the litfic darling at the centre of this book, the Danish author of sparse and plotless high fiction, is that controversial thing, an unlikeable main character. Confessedly alcoholic, she seems to be going through "issues" most of which Jenny Lund Madsen keeps from us though boozy Hannah is clearly also suffering from writer's block and from envy of the massively successful crime star Jørn Jensen. It all comes to a head at a book fair when she starts throwing things at him. Only the intervention of her editor Bastian, who converts the spat into a publicity opportunity, saves the day - leaving her with that commitment to write a crime novel in 30 days. But anyone can do that, right?

I suspect many readers of this review (hi, both of you! Hope you're keeping well!) would sympathise with my view here that, no, we shouldn't be dissing anyone's choice of reading. So haughty Hannah is already edging into unlikeability even before she starts insulting her placid landlady (who's driven six hours to collect her from the airport). 

Yet there is something about Hannah. She has a fatal and almost endearing tendency to rush into actions and situations without thinking, resulting in either toe-curling embarrassment (as with Ella the landlady), or actual danger (once the killings begin, and Hannah decides to investigate - it's not clear whether that is more from simple morbid curiosity, or a need for inspiration, though the latter certainly features). Sometimes the result is both embarrassment and peril.

And actually, it's not as though Hannah does a great deal better when she does think it all through. The best you can say is that, perhaps, she doesn't follow through the most outlandish of her ideas. They do though give the book a bit of a comedic edge, and by the end you may have a bit of respect for the forbearance shown her by the people of Húsafjörður.

That comedy shouldn't though distract from a thread of genuine darkness that threads through the core of this book. The title may refer to the dark days of midwinter, but as Hannah comes closer and closer to the truth of the situation she will discover it in the people of Húsafjörður too and begin to suspect everyone of being part of it.

Thirty Days of Darkness didn't disappoint me. In Hannah, Jenny Lund Madsen has given us a vividly portrayed and complex character whom I hope to meet again. The book recognises the expectations that have been generated by the wave of Scandi-noir - both for its readers and for those who get caught up in the events described. Indeed, Jørn's comments about how a crime novel ought to be constructed address both, as the story Hannah is writing gets tangled up with the "actual" events in Húsafjörður. Another layer is added by Hannah's reading an ancient Icelandic saga which has things to say about honour, vengeance and power.

All in all, a distinctive novel that makes full use of Hannah as its protagonist to approach the crime genre from a new angle.

Also, great fun to read - Megan Turney's English translation has to cope with a myriad of challenges: Hannah and the people she meets are mainly communicating in English, their only common language, but not all of them are totally proficient and Ella, for example, tends to write rather than speak, with a lot of Icelandic left in. But the result is smooth and readable - while accented just enough for the reader to recognise the different voices and languages in use here.

I recommend you buy this one at once, it's even on the shelves in Sainsbury's so grab it while you can.

For more information about Thirty Days of Darkness, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Thirty Days of Darkness from your local high street bookshop, in-store at Sainsbury's, or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Blogtour #Review - Murder Under the Midnight Sun by Stella Blómkvist

Murder Under the Midnight Sun
Stella Blómkvist (trans Quentin Bates)
Corylus Books, 3 May 2024
Available as: PB, 285pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781739298944

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of Murder Under the Midnight Sun to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Before I start I would warn that there are some themes of male abuse and violence in Murder Under the Midnight Sun.

Welcome back Stella Blómkvist - meaning both the women of that name, the anonymous author, and the title character of this series.

I don't know anything about the former, but when we rejoin the latter, Stella the lawyer and sometime investigator of crime, she's enjoying life, taking part in a documentary series showcasing Iceland's most prominent women. This takes her up a glacier (a place she cheerfully admits, she's never been before and never will go to again) where a gruesome discovery awaits - Stella just can't keep away from mysteries, and indeed she's also just picked up a cold case. A Scottish woman disappeared in Iceland nine years before, and her uncle is desperate to find what happened to her before her mum dies. Stella's meticulous investigation of this missing girl nicely contrasts with another case which crops up, that of a man very much present and accused of murder. I enjoyed seeing how this latter enquiry - which closely engages the current generation of police and prosecutors, who therefore have a pretty solid motivation to oppose Stella - sets off the older one, where nobody seems to care much about anything...

...until Stella gets too close to a solution.

As I said, Stella's pretty busy in this one, yet she still has time for some romantic distractions. She also happily has fairly obliging childcare, so that odd nights spent in a hotel room don't seem to require much advance planning. That also of course helps greatly with the case, which requires her to visit some fairly remote parts of Iceland, often in the 'silver steed'. One of the things I enjoy about this series is the familiar atmosphere created by author and by translator Quentin Bates, letting us know immediately that we are in Stella's world. Her car is always the aforementioned 'silver steed', her favourite tipple (Jack Daniels) the 'Kentucky nectar'. There are several references to the state of the 'Stella fund', the murky set of investments that now seems to be doing pretty well thank you, after some concerns in the last book.

None of this would be enough to carry the story if it wasn't also pin sharp, complex and engaging, but of course it is. Without saying too much, events here take us into two quite different but equally dark aspects of Iceland's recent past. These will surprise the reader, showcasing the more sinister side, perhaps, of a country with a relatively small population where there are connections beneath the surface and people pop up over the decades in very different - and seemingly quite opposed - roles in public life. That can create tensions and give motivation for covering things up, something Stella spends a lot of time unpicking.

All in all, great fun, an involving story elegantly translated. 

I want more Stella!

For more information about Murder Under the Midnight Sun, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Murder Under the Midnight Sun from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#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.

#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.

#Blogtour #Review - Murder at the Residence by Stella Blómkvist

Murder at the Residence (Translated by Quentin Bates)
Stella Blómkvist
Corylus Books, 28 August 2023
Available as: PB, 266pp, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN: 9781739298920

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

I've been eager to share this review, as the book's central character is something of a paradox. 

In the years after the financial crash, as Icelandic society buckles under the political and fiscal strain, lawyer Stella Blómkvist pursues her practice in Reykjavík - in a book written by author Stella Blómkvist, a figure whose identity none has yet deduced, but who seems to move in high circles.

Murder at the Residence certainly appears to reflect a degree of personal knowledge, as author Blómkvist has her protagonist entangled with the murder of a leading financier after a Government reception, with a possible attempted coverup of what looks like dark and murky secrets.

Blómkvist (the lawyer) is an interesting figure. Raising a daughter alone, and pursuing her professional and personal life around nursery drops and family mealtimes, she's fearless, willing to go out on a limb, clashing both with the Reykjavík police (portrayed here as distinctly unreconstructed, happy to crack down on protesters but slow to take action to protect trafficked women) and the city's underworld. All this is against a background of anger at the way Iceland has been impoverished by financiers, and active protests besieging Parliament.

Yet lawyer Blómkvist isn't, perhaps, squeaky clean. She is also preoccupied with the state of the 'Stella Fund', a financial entity that seems to have taken a beating from the the market collapse, and she has her own contacts in Reykjavík's shadier business circles. Those contacts come in useful in resolving the several cases that she deals with in this book. There's the dead financier, a murder that one of her clients is accused of. She's trying to track down a missing young Latvian woman lured into sex work and who may have been spirited out of the country. And she's also searching for the lost daughter of a dying man who wants to make amends. 

I understand that Murder at the Residence is a return for Blómkvist, the character having featured in in an earlier series of books, and the sense of backstory, of a developed character, adds richness to the portrayal here. She is certainly a fascinating and contradictory person, whether haunting the Reykjavík nightclubs looking for fun or tenaciously defending a client. Both aspects of her are used by Blómkvist (the writer) to expose the darker side of Icelandic society (prompting, again, the question of just how much knowledge and experience this story reflects). Quotes from her mother, often cynical ('Time never fails to douse the fires of passion') pepper the text, also suggesting another key relationship about which we know little.

Quentin Bates' assured translation more than does justice to the rapidly unfolding action in this taut and suspenseful story and overall this was a cracking mystery, with a well-drawn and engaging central character, giving a slightly different view of Iceland. I'd strongly recommend it.

About the author and series

Stella Blómkvist has been a bestselling series in Iceland since the first book appeared in the 1990s and has attracted an international audience since the TV series starring Heiða Reed aired. This series features tough, razor-tongued Reykjavík lawyer Stella Blómkvist, with her taste for neat whiskey, a liking for easy money and a moral compass all of her own - and who is at home in the corridors of power as in the city’s darkest nightspots.

The books have been published under a pseudonym that still hasn’t been cracked. The question of Stella Blómkvist’s identity is one that crops up regularly, but it looks like it’s going to remain a mystery…

About the translator

Quentin Bates is a writer, translator and journalist. He has professional and personal roots in Iceland that run very deep. He worked as a seaman before turning to maritime journalism. He is an author of a series of nine crime novels and novellas featuring the Reykjavik detective Gunnhildur (Gunna) Gísladóttir. In addition to writing his own fiction, he has translated books by Guðlaugur Arason, Einar Kárason, and crème de la crème of the Icelandic crime fiction authors Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Óskar Guðmundsson, Jónína Leósdóttir, Sólveig Pálsdóttir and Ragnar Jónasson. Quentin was instrumental in launching IcelandNoir, the crime fiction festival in Reykjavik.

For more information about Murder at the Residence, and to buy the book, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can also order Murder at the Residence from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Blogtour #Review - Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen

Thirty Days of Darkness (translated by Megan Turney)
Jenny Lund Madsen
Orenda Books, 25 May 2023, 
Available as: HB, 321pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 978191458616

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for sending me a copy of Thirty Days of Darkness to consider for review, and to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the book's Random Things blogtour.

I was so much looking forward to this one - even just from the cover (yes, I know, don't judge a book by its cover, but who doesn't...) which delivered one of my favourite visual tropes, a lit window at night. The synopsis entices too - a literary author taking up the challenge to write crime, travelling to a remote corner of Iceland to do it, and stumbling across the real thing...

Hannah, the litfic darling at the centre of this book, the Danish author of sparse and plotless high fiction, is that controversial thing, an unlikeable main character. Confessedly alcoholic, she seems to be going through "issues" most of which Jenny Lund Madsen keeps from us though alcoholic Hannah is clearly also suffering from writer's block and from envy of the massively successful crime star Jørn Jensen. It all comes to a head at a book fair when she starts throwing things at him. Only the intervention of her editor Bastian, who converts the spat into a publicity opportunity, saves the day - but leaving her with that commitment to write a crime novel in 30 days. But anyone can do that, right?

I suspect many readers of this review (hi, both of you! Hope you're keeping well!) would sympathise with my view here that, no, we shouldn't be dissing anyone's choice of reading. So haughty Hannah is already edging into unlikeability before she starts insulting her placid landlady (who's driven six hours to collect her from the airport). 

Yet there is something about Hannah. She has a fatal and almost endearing tendency to rush into actions and situations without thinking, resulting in either toe-curling embarrassment (as with Ella the landlady), or actual danger (once the killings begin, and Hannah decides to investigate - it's not clear whether that is more from simple morbid curiosity, or a need for inspiration, though the latter certainly features). Sometimes the result is both embarrassment and peril.

And actually, it's not as though Hannah does a great deal better when she does think it all through. The best you can say is that, perhaps, she doesn't follow through the most outlandish of her ideas. They do though give the book a bit of a comedic edge, and by the end you may have a bit of respect for the forbearance shown her by the people of Húsafjörður.

That comedy shouldn't though distract from a thread of genuine darkness that threads through the core of this book. The title may refer to the dark days of midwinter, but as Hannah comes closer and closer to the truth of the situation she will discover it in the people of Húsafjörður too and begin to suspect everyone of being part of it.

Thirty Days of Darkness didn't disappoint me. In Hannah, Jenny Lund Madsen has given us a vividly portrayed and complex character whom I hope to meet again. The book recognises the expectations that have been generated by the wave of Scandi-noir - both for its readers and for those who get caught up in the events described. Indeed, Jørn's comments about how a crime novel ought to be constructed address both, as the story Hannah is writing gets tangled up with the "actual" events in Húsafjörður. Another layer is added by Hannah's reading an ancient Icelandic saga which has things to say about honour, vengeance and power.

All in all, a rather distinctive novel that makes full use of Hannah as its protagonist to approach the crime genre from a new angle.

Also, great fund to read - Megan Turney's English translation has to cope with a myriad of challenges: Hannah and the people she meets are mainly communicating in English, but not all of the latter are totally proficient and Ella, for example, tends to write rather than speak, with a lot of Icelandic left in. But the result is smooth and readable while accented just enough to recognises the different voices and languages in use here.

For more information about Thirty Days of Darkness, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Thirty Days of Darkness from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.