Customer Reviews

Voices (Reykjavik Murder Mysteries 3)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Voices", the third Icelandic crime mystery written by Arnaldur Indridason and translated by Bernard Scudder, is as dark, brooding, and fatalistic as the two that preceded it.

But hey, if this were Tahiti, they wouldn't call it "Iceland".

And if one were to select a "Mr. Iceland" based on a personality most representative of this barren landscape of volcanoes and endless winter nights, Indridason's irascible police detective Erlander Sveinsson would leave the competition far behind.

In this installment of gloom, it is the Christmas season, and Erlander is called upon to investigate the murder of Gulauger Egilsson, a 50-ish doorman of one of Reykjavik's better hotels, found in his hotel basement room with his Santa Claus suit around his ankles and fatal knife wounds in his chest. What follows would be a rather pedestrian whodunit - a standard crime drama of turning up clues and connecting the dots - were it not for the talented Indridason and his penchant for painting with a palette of despair what could have been a Currier and Ives Scandinavian Holiday card. Unbeknownst to hotel management or staff, the reclusive Gulauger was once a child star - a choirboy of international fame, who at twelve had two records published, destined for fame and the Vienna Boys' Choir. But not content to rely solely on poor Gulanger's sordid tale, the author deftly weaves together parallel threads, each apparently competing to see which can be more depressing. We have Erlander's partner Elinborg chasing down a case of parental child abuse, while his daughter bounces from thoughts of suicide to drug addiction, pining over her complicity in the death of her own infant daughter. And Erlander, his own solitude no longer an effective shield under the tidal waves of grief and murder that surround him, reflects on and nearly confronts his own unresolved guilt following the death of his younger brother decades before. These threads wind tightly together in a tapestry of pain, lurching and stumbling, taking more twists than a pretzel factory in reaching a bitterly ironic, while fitting, climax.

So by now, you're probably wondering how this smörgåsbord of sorrow could rate five stars. The answer is Indridason's prose, the magic of a straightforward and unapologetic slice of life - not the way we'd wish it or the way Hollywood would have us believe it - but the way it is. Depressing - maybe - but there is also strength and nobility in the grit of real people confronting real adversities and struggling, or failing, to simply survive. This is tough stuff, but in its own way powerful and, if not redeeming, certainly memorable. But if all of these psychological mumbo jumbo ramblings of desperation are still putting you off - take heart. For at it's core, "Voices" is simply a darn good mystery wrapped around a cleverly inventive - if sad - plot. So if you want smiley, happy, beautiful people obsessed with fashion trends and trendy relationships, fire up the tube and surf over to the "Friends" re-runs. But if noir served up cold is your midnight snack, let the cagey Mr. Indridason take you on this tour of Iceland you'll never find in the travelogues.

This is directly quoted from the jacket because it has not been posted yet:

Detective Erlendur encounters memories of his troubled past in this gripping and award-winning continuation of the Reykjavik Murder Mysteries.

At a grand Reykjavik hotel, the doorman has been repeatedly stabbed in the dingy basement room he called home. It is only a few days before Christmas and he was preparing to appear as Santa Claus at a children's party. The manager tries to keep the murder under wraps. A glum detective taking up residence in his hotel and an intrusinve murder investigation are not what he needs.

As Erlendur quietly surveys the cast of grotesques who popluate the hotel, the web of malice, greed and coruption that lies beneath the surface reveals itself. Everyone has something to hide. But most shocking is the childhood secret of the dead man who, many years before, was the most famous child singer in the country. It turns out to be a brush with stardom which could ultimately cost him everything. As Christmas Day approaches Erlendur must delve deeply into the past to find the man's killer.

Voices is a tense, atmospheric and disturbing novel from one of Europes greates crime writers."

Arnaldur allows the reader to get inside his protagonist's head in a way few authors are able to do. Interwoven in this procedural are bits of Erlendur's own troubled life and family. As you follow him on his rounds of interviewing the characters involved in the victim's life, you will encounter the extremes of human emotion. This is definitely a "can't put down" novel.

I just finished reading 3 books (in 3.5 days) by a wonderful author I've recently discovered: Arnaldur Indridason & he's Icelandic.
The 3 books that have been translated into English are: JAR CITY (2004), SILENCE OF THE GRAVE (2005) & VOICES (2006). Two more are scheduled for release late next year and I can hardly wait!!!

It's truly a fascinating read and it pulled me in FAST, drawing me to the next novel and then the next at a pretty fast clip.

There's not the kind of action, drama, gruesomeness that is in many crime/thriller novels these days. There is a feeling that you accompany the detectives on their journey to a resolution. You can feel the cold, see the landscape, experience the smells and the warmth of a fire!

It's like watching a foreign movie. You're drawn into an interplay with the characters as they evolve. If Arnaldur Indridson's books were made into movies, they'd need Alfred Hitchcock as the director. Both can (could) tease you with fear that's been subtly created.

I can't say enough. Check this author out yourself.

When you read mysteries/thrillers written by Scandinavians you can feel the cold and darkness that they live in for a good portion of the year. More than any of the others, Iceland must be even more dreary, like living in Alaska (without all the fun). I can't imagine what it must have been like to live on this bleak island before there were phones, movies, cable and the internet. You get the feeling that the people who lived there thought of themselves as the living dead.

Even today, with the economy of Iceland (spelled Island in Icelandic) being at a level of middle class for most people, the cold and dark still looms over the people who live there. Iceland has one of the highest percentage of alcoholism and drugs use of any developed nation.

All of Arnaldur's (Icelanders use patronymics as last names and refer to each other by first names only) characters seem to have the same problem as the criminals, that life has beaten them down. But I think that it's more the climate than anything else.

The beginning of the book seems to absorb this feeling of dreariness and only slowly builds to a conclusion, but that's what makes it so great. There are really three stories going on at once but they are woven so well that they done show separation for quite a long time. The pacing is absolutely brilliant.

One sad note: the translator for the first three of Arnaldur's books was Bernard Scudder who died in late 2006. Scudder (who was English) had spent many years in Iceland (his wife and two daughters are Icelandic) and did a phenomenal job of translation. He will be sorely missed.

As with all good noir, the protagonist solves the crime and also solves something about himself. Building on his two earlier works, the third manages to do just that. It is easy to say, hard to do. But Indridason does it deftly, never laying it on too thick, and(unlike the first two books) manages it all with some humor. Erlendur still grieves his brother, lost due to childhood accident years ago, for which he blames himself and feels the guilt that has ruined his life. But he has been complicit in the ruin, a willing voulunteer. He investigates the murder of a man, like him haunted by his childhood. In doing so, he understands more about himself and takes---no matter how slowly, how tenatively---the first steps to forgive himself. A fine work.

A man has been murdered in a tiny basement room in one of Reykjavik's grandest hotels. A man who's been the doorman/handyman and seasonal Santa Claus at the hotel for years, although no one seems to know much about him. A man with a strange and tragic past. A man who was once, briefly, famous.

Erlendur is the detective assigned to the case-- a haunted, brooding man with family problems and unresolved issues from his own past. A man who buries himself in the case and tries to avoid going home, even as Christmas approaches. As he and his colleagues investigate, they find themselves peeling back layer upon layer of sadness and horror, encountering family secrets long buried, and learning more than they ever wanted about themselves as well.

Author Arnaldur Indridason is one of Iceland's great contemporary writers, and I'm so glad his work is available in English. He is a brilliant writer who goes deep below the surface to explore the dark corners of human nature. This, then, is far more than a murder mystery, though it's a good one. It is a story about lost innocence, ruined childhood and family secrets and it's brilliantly done. The only problem I had was wrapping my mind around the numerous Icelandic names, but with time I got used to them. I enjoyed Voices immensely and recommend it most highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

In southern Europe and the U.S., Scandinavians frequently are thought of as dour, depressive, and alcoholic, all as a result of suffering through long, dark, cold winters. Actually, Danes and Swedes think of themselves as cheerful, upbeat optimists and reserve the noted personality traits for the saga-bound residents of Iceland. Erlendur Sveinsson, detective inspector and homicide specialist with the Reykjavik police, probably would agree with him. At least, most violent crimes in Iceland aren't premeditated -- though there's a good deal more organized crime around than when he was young. Most murders in his country are crimes of passion, committed on the spur of the moment. And he begins with that assumption when a hotel doorman who also dresses up as Santa during the holidays is found stabbed to death a few days before Christmas in his tiny room in the hotel's basement, with his trousers around his ankles. Even though the victim had lived on the premises for two decades, no one among the staff seems to know much about him, nor do they care. Erlendur is both irritated and intrigued by this attitude and he actually moves into a room at the hotel for the duration of the case. Not that it interrupts his own plans; Erlendur lives to work, does not celebrate Christmas, declines to spend the yuletide with any of his colleagues, can barely deal with his drugged-out, previously pregnant adult daughter, has no interest in his son, and would rather spend his free time by himself in his own cold, dark apartment. He lives a gray, charmless life, and maybe he has more in common with the murder victim than he would want to admit. Because both of them carry tragic secrets from their youth which have shaped their lives. And, as with the author's two previous novels, that's what the book is really about -- the often strained, even nonexistent, sometimes abusive relationships between adults and children, between parents and their offspring, and between siblings. The plotline about the solution to the murder is a bit pro-forma and the solution is somewhat predictable, but that really isn't why you want to read Indrišason. The forces that kept the murdered Santa in his basement room aren't that different from the memories that keep Erlendur entrenched deep within himself, reading accounts of deaths in winter blizzards. Indrišason sticks close to his previous theme, of crimes and tragedies in the past and their present-day effects, of strained interpersonal relationships, and of the long, cold, gray days of people's lives. It's a theme that drags some readers down but I find his way with his characters to be deeply interesting. In a way, it's difficult to like any of these people but they're certainly fascinating. His style, however, is somewhat more awkward in this third outing than previously. Also, the translation is a bit dodgy at times, and the final English manuscript would have benefitted from closer copyediting and proofing.

I have to admit that I am favorably drawn to many of the scandavian writers to begin with, but that does not affect my feeling that each one of the volumes written by Indridason has been better than the last. Unlike American novels that tend to be plot driven, these are usually character oriented and understanding the mental processes, and inherent conflicts, of each of the characters is fascinating to me. I get a strong sense of the different culture involved, Icelandic in this series, and I found this book delightful. I finished it quickly because I enjoyed it so much. I'm looking forward to reading "Draining Lake", the most recent in the series.

Arnaldur Indridason's third translated Icelandic thriller, "Voices", again features Detective Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson who is summoned along with his team Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli to an upscale Reykjavik hotel at the onset of the Christmas holidays. The doorman who doubled as the hotel Santa had been found stabbed while dressed up in his Santa suit apparently having been engaged in a sexual act. The victim Gudlaugur Egilsson had been employed by the hotel for upwards of twenty years yet nobody associated with the hotel claimed to know much about him including his bosses the corpulent hotel manager and the reception manager.

Erlendur and his colleagues had little to go on but were faced with a hotel full of guests both foreign and Icelandic and a shady hotel staff as suspects.

Investigation into the background of the victim produced startling results. Apparently Gudlaugur had been a choirboy and childhood singing prodigy blessed with an angelic soprano voice. So accomplished was he that he cut a pair of records and was planning to go on tour through Scandinavia when his voice disasterously changed owing to puberty. Gudlaugur's life which had been carefully and sternly structured by his domineering father was shattered. His childhood had been robbed, shunning friendships with his schoolmates, stilting his social developement to practice his music. This unfortunate incident lead to him being estranged from his family, a father and sister, for some thirty years.

Gudlaugur had been scheduled to meet with a sleazy, nicotined British record collector Henry Wapshott who specialized in choirboys. Gudlaugur supposedly had a cache of his records worth a fortune on the collecting market, providing a plausible motive.

Indridason studded his plot with many paralleling layers of psychological drama with his characters. Gudlaugur's history commenced introspection by Inspector Erlendur of his own childhood. He had symbolically been robbed of his childhood by guilt associated with the disappearance of his younger 8 year old brother in a raging blizzard in which he survived. His colleague Elinborg was concurrently involved in a case of severe child abuse probably committed by the child's father. I

Erlendur and his crew painstakingly plod through an exhaustive investigation robbing everyone of the Christmas spirit as they finally nail the murderer of the unfortunate former child star.

While not the best I've read by Indridason, "Voices" goes well beyond a standard police procedural infusing a great deal of psychological dilemma among his characters particularly when broaching the subject of child abuse and neglect.

The grand hotel is loaded with tourists vacationing in Iceland during Christmas. However, the management calls the Reykjavik police to inform them someone murdered their doorman who doubled as Santa Claus. Police inspector Erlendur and Detectives Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg arrive at the crime scene to find in the basement the bludgeoned corpse of Gudlaugur Egilsson; a used condom hangs from his penis.

As saliva is taken from all the guests and employees, the three cops interview everyone, but no one admits knowing the victim outside of the hotel. The hotel manager confesses that he had just fired Gudlaugur, but had no motive to kill him. Erlendur and his companions soon learn that Gudlaugur was a popular soprano as a young boy so the sleuths turn towards his family, whom he was estranged from after an incident with his father left the older Egilsson wheelchair bound. Erlendur personalizes the case as it reminds him of his own family, but diligently continues seeking the motive that will lead to the killer's identity if DNA testing fails to do so.

This terrific Icelander police procedural combines a strong murder investigation with Erlendur's personal crisis as the case is wearing him down. His daughter visits him though everyone assumes she is a hooker he hired, and he considers an affair with a crime scene technician. Readers will appreciate Arnaldur Indridason's fabulous whodunit due to predominately Erlendur (see his previous case SILENCE OF THE GRAVE).

Harriet Klausner