Customer Reviews

Tainted Blood (A Reykjavik Murder Mystery)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It would have been good to know that "Tainted Blood" was actually the novel "Jar City" before I purchased it and realized the confusion after 2 pages.

Much as I enjoyed this book, I would like to give fair warning that it was published as "Jar City" before being retitled for this paperback edition. I wish publishing houses wouldn't do this as it is very misleading.

Inspecteur Erlendur has to solve the murder of an elderly man, Holberg, who is found with a crushed skull in his own appartment. During the investigation Erlendur finds out that Holberg was a real monster whose past has now caught up with him. Erlendur's quest in the pouring Iceland autumn rain takes him via rapes, heartless policemen, bastard children and murder in the past to a solution that has everything to do with modern times. And in the meantime he has to cope with pain in his breast and a daughter that is on drugs.

A book from Iceland in the best tradition of the Scandinavian thrillers: a slightly chagrined police inspector and a lot of attention for the backgrounds of the crimes and victims. A skillful mixture of thriller and literature. Wonderful to read.

I feel it incumbent upon me by reason of the sheer weight of tradition to say that while the current name of this book is "Tainted Blood" (a blandly generic title), it was originally published and reviewed right here in Amazon as "Jar City" (a spectacularly lousy title). And if the growls from reviewers are to be believed, not to mention the statistics displayed by Auntie Ammy, quite a few people have bought this same book right here under both titles.

Buyer, open your eyes and, for Pete's sake, beware!

I enjoy mystery novels. The demographics of the book purchasing public being what they are, most contemporary mysteries published these days involve spunky young women struggling for success in various unusual--even unlikely--professions. These young women shop, shmooze with their female and gay friends, juggle one or two (or three or four) budding love affairs with hunky, curiously attentive and oddly unpossessive young men while they encounter dastardly deeds and solve seemingly impenetrable mysteries.

Heaven help me, perky ... perkier ... perkiest!

"Tainted Blood" is not perky, no, definitely not perky. "Tainted Blood" is anhedonia, inside gloom, wrapped up in depression. It is, in short, a perfect literary antidote for a surfeit of perkiness.

The hero--a term I use here by convention rather than as an accurate description--a Reykjavic cop, is so profoundly and universally depressed that it does not even occur to him that he is a miserable wreck. His landscape--not to mention his world-view--consists of a frigid ocean, rocky cliffs, mires, icy mountain passes and lava fields. His weather is cold and wet, tending to freezing. He is in the middle of the longest rainy period since the record-setting year 1926, and there's no end in sight. At one point, his mid-day sky is described as "black"--not "grey," not "dark," not "gloomy," but "black." Now, that word may an artifact of author Arnaldur Indrišason's ("š" = "th") English-language translator, but I don't think so. "Black" is precisely the right word for such a book such as this.

I live in Canada, under skies that might sometimes be described as leaden, wet, cold ... and gloomy, too. When I read this book, I was reminded of the famous words of a former pro hockey coach and current NHL commentator for Canadian television: "Ya gotta love it!"

Some have described "Tainted Blood" as a "police procedural." It is not. Yes, the protagonist is a police detective and yes, he is more or less officially solving a crime. On the other hand, he never seems to file any kind of paperwork or, indeed, perform any sort of administrative task at all. He goes wandering about, in and out of town, giving no explanations to anybody. He has no subordinates. He seems content to be utterly without knowledge of any modern technical aids to crime-solving. He works in what can only be described as a loose tribal alliance with other detectives of his own rank, who each seem as rootless and down in the mouth as he is. He regularly wanders off to solve personally-selected mysteries about which his colleagues and superiors know nothing at all. He routinely makes end-runs around the man who is supposedly his immediately superior and casually shrugs off all complaints without any perceivable consequences.

In short, he's about five steps short of being as believable a cop as Peter Falk's Columbo. Rather than a "police procedural," you ought to think of this as an "uncozy mystery."

The mystery in "Tainted Blood," a suitably glum and gloomy one, is OK, not great but good enough. The characters, all suffering in various degrees with betrayal, denial, misery and tragedy, are not bad. The conclusion is satisfyingly downbeat. In the words of John Milton, "Yet from those flames/No light, but rather darkness visible."

Yeah, Icelandic darkness visible: four gloomy and depressed stars, without a perk among them.

LEC/AM/10-08

The sombre fall weather in Iceland can have a depressing influence on the people of Reykjavik. Even when it is not raining, the clouds are hanging deep over the city and the short days of light are preparing for an even darker winter. Arnaldur Indridason depicts the atmosphere brilliantly. A bleak, yet not uncommon environment for excellent thrillers. In Iceland, crime is usually straightforward, the motive evident and the case quickly resolved, muses Inspector Erlendur Sveinnson of the local police. He is of the brooding, morose kind, fitting well with the climate. Everybody knows somebody who is known to you - the geography of the island leads to these interconnections. However, when called to an apparent murder of 69 year-old Holberg, the pattern does not appear to fit. There doesn't seem to be a motive - nothing was stolen, for example. Did the victim know his attacker? Ponderous Erlendur has an eye for detail and that skill leads him down some unexpected paths in the hunt for the killer. Holberg also is not the quiet solitary retiree his neighbours think he is - a nasty past comes to light as Erlendur's perseveres, even when faced with opposition by his colleagues, should show results. The case requires digging deep into the past of the various victims that come to light. Secrets are buried deep in this close-knit society.

"Tainted Blood", Indridason's the first translated English novel, initially published under the title "Jar City", is an excellent introduction into Icelandic crime fiction. Erlendur's personality is very well developed. Similarities with his Swedish detective colleague Kurt Wallender (by Henning Mankell) come easily to mind. Both are complex and tested by personal as well as professional challenges. The social environment of the investigators, the victims and the villains is craftily portrayed. The title of the reissued book is unfortunate however, as it does provide a clue to one element in the dramatic story early on. Despite that, the tension is kept to the unpredictable end. [Friederike Knabe]

I was on the point of ordering this book before I realized that I'd already read it, and five-star reviewed it, under a different title: JAR CITY. I like the first title much more, but common sense suggests that whichever edition comes for the better price should get your business.

The Inspector Erlandur novels are great fun. I've just posted my review of The Draining Lake, the fourth in the series.

This offering is welcome news indeed.

I had purchased in the UK and read Indridason's "Silence of the Grave" and "Voices", and found them to be above average (say, three-star material), but nothing special.

Then I read "Tainted Blood" (aka "Jar City": I hope book publishers and others in the know who don't tell are consigned to Hell in the afterlife) and found it a far better book.

The characters are more fully fleshed, more believable (in particular, Arnaldur seems for the first time a genuinely puzzled and tired human being, and Eva Lind also has some endearing traits). The plot -you can't speak of a "whodunit" or a "mystery" in Police Procedurals, as from the start they take you by the hand and virtually put you inside the policeman's brain- is very ingenious, and the factual parts of the story very up to date (actually, "The Economist" published an article on the discussion surrounding the creation of the Icelandic medical database some years ago). Everything is very believable and lifelike, but the touches that confer this quality on the novel are so deftly inserted that you don't notice them, whereas most other books don't manage to achieve the effect despite being laden with far more vulgar earthy details.

A nice surprise, and a good book. Buy it and you won't be disappointed.

I have just discovered this author and have read all that is presently available in english-wonderful reading!!!!

I wish they wouldn't publish the same book by two different names. I love this author's books, they're so different than american writers.

It rains, much of the police work is at night, there are sewer rats and rapists, yellow phlegm, incest, collectors of organs, failed policemen and the skeletal elderly. And it is Iceland in the fall. Despite all of this, the book was engaging and filled with the warmth of human love. The Detective is known as Erlendur and his sidekick is Oli. Oli is a yuppie and a cynic who cannot fully understand his boss. His boss, Erlundur rarely combs his red hair, rarely shaves, rarely reveals his inner feelings. He sleeps in his suit, eats takeout food and has lost contact with his children who grew up to be street people and drug addicts. His daughter arrives home in a ruin pursued by drug debts and collectors and she is pregnant.

A man is murdered in his basement flat that smells of horses. A link exists to a rape that happened forty years earlier. A little girl dies and the rape victim committed suicide also nearly forty years ago. The tightly knit bloodlines of Iceland are the only path Erlundur can follow and this he does until he discovers a horrible truth involving genetics, pathologists, drunken doctors and very much abuse.

The story is clearly Scandinavian in feel. The protagonist not only suffers loneliness but an ache in his chest compounds his feeling of doom. I just love this about the vulnerable characters in these books from these climes. I will keep on buying them. I give this a rating of four genomes out of five.