We are getting to know our friend Erlendur quite well by now. He has this obsession with missing people and old cases, coming from his childhood trauma of the brother lost in snow. On the other hand, he is unwilling to treat his own broken marriage with the same curiosity. What is done is done. But who says we need to be consistent. Neither does Erlendur.
Volume 6 in the series (I have not read 5, Arctic Chill, yet) is a rather slow and meditative addition. I like it for that. Erlendur moves a bit outside his real job and investigates the background of a suicide, which is no case at all, officially. At the same time he is talking to people related to stone cold disappearance cases.
Erlendur does not believe in ghosts, but this non-case pulls him into esoteric worlds. Near death experiences, dreams, hallucinations, a book dropped from a shelf, séances with one medium and then the other, a haunted house, voices of the dead. These are the stuff that some worlds are made of. Not really Erlendur's world, nor mine, but he handles them like we would expect him to: with curiosity and mistrust. He does well. He has grown further in my respect.
Another question is, is it a good thriller? I would suspect that the thriller habitué might be a bit dissatisfied. Too slow, too ponderous, too unsurprising.
For us Erlendur pals, it is a good one. Good for friendship. The man is rounding out, his edges are getting smoother. His social intelligence seems to grow somewhat. He doesn't always behave like a bull in the china shop. Only sometimes.
Literature wise, the novel signifies a departure. The central book reference in this novel is not Laxness, for a change, but Proust. Indridason himself is neither a Laxness nor a Proust, but he comes closer. `Du cote de chez Swann' is the key book for the story.
