Shrouded (An Ice and Crime Mystery) by Sólveig Pálsdóttir

 

Shrouded (An Ice and Crime Mystery) by Sólveig Pálsdóttir.

Translated from the Icelandic by Quentin Bates.

Published 20th July 2024 by Corylus Books.

From the cover of the book:

A retired, reclusive woman is found on a bitter winter morning, clubbed to death in Reykjavik's old graveyard.

Detectives Guðgeir and Elsa Guðrún face one of their toughest cases yet, as they try to piece together the details of Arnhildur's austere life in her Red House in the oldest part of the city.

Why was this solitary, private woman attending séances, and why was she determined to keep her severe financial difficulties so secret?

Could the truth be buried deep in her past and a long history of family enmity, or could there be something more?

A stranger keeps a watchful eye on the graveyard and Arnhildur's house. With the detectives running out of leads, could the Medium, blessed and cursed with uncanny abilities, shed any light on Arnhildur’s lonely death?

***********

When an elderly woman is found bludgeoned to death in a Reykjavik cemetery, on a freezing winter morning, Detectives Guðgeir and Elsa Guðrún have no idea how complicated, and eerie, this case is going to be.

Searching for a motive for the killing, it becomes apparent to them that there was more going on in Arnhildur's unhappy life than meets the eye. Stories of a family torn apart by bitter recriminations take the investigation in scattered directions, but fail to explain why a woman living in an impressive property in the oldest part of Reykjavik was in such desperate need of money, or why she came to a grisly end among the gravestones. 

Perhaps it is time for them to put aside their doubts and listen to the strange Medium, who claims to be in contact with Arnhildur from beyond the grave...

Shrouded is the seventh book in Sólveig Pálsdóttir's Icelandic Ice and Crime Series, and the fourth book to have been published in English by Corylus Books, translated by Quentin Bates. It is my first foray in the series, and can be read as a stand-alone case, allowing for gaps in the back stories of the returning characters in the team of Detectives Guðgeir and Elsa Guðrún.

The story begins as my favourite kind of Icelandic noir crime does, with a brutal murder against a vividly described snowy backdrop, setting up a many-layered investigation with a lot of questions to be answered.

The case proceeds in slow burn style, as Detectives Guðgeir and Elsa Guðrún pursue scanty clues, taking you down parallel plotlines and leading to some lovely misdirection. Typical Icelandic noir themes run through the story, with a hefty whack of sins of the past, tragedy, family estrangement, abandonment, abuse, blackmail, and murder, and Pálsdóttir weaves the narrative structure in a really interesting way to switch points of view between a number of characters beyond the Guðgeir and Guðrún. This works magic in creating suspense, keeping the twists and turns going all the way to the end, and making you suspicious of just about everyone!

I liked the comfortable relationship between Guðgeir and Guðrún. Their foibles and verbal sparring add the kind of charm that you need with recurring characters. However, the pacing of the crime plot does suffer a bit from the involvement of personal aspects of the lives of the wider team, given that the book is only 257 pages long. But, these parts of the novel may well seem more relevant to readers who are familiar with the other books in the series, even if they felt a bit clunky and outdated given the (I presume) modern setting of the book. I did enjoy that Pálsdóttir touches on the plight of older people who find themselves in financial trouble in their latter years, which is a subject that is little explored in crime novels.

What Pálsdóttir does with accomplished flair is to set your mind reeling with supernatural whisperings from the word go, threading hair-raising possibilities into every aspect of the story that contrast beautifully with the gritty police procedural elements. And in that way masters of the craft like Stephen King do so well, there are uncanny things that cannot easily be explained away, which adds a delicious little edge to the proceedings. Nicely done!

As usual, when it comes to a Quentin Bates translation, he has done stellar work in making this an engaging read, while keeping the distinctive tone I enjoy in a book set in the land of ice and fire. I look forward very much to going back and reading the other Ice and Crime books he has translated, as I can never get enough of the work of a compelling Icelandic crime writer.

Shrouded is available to buy now in paperback and ebook. 

Thank you to Corylus Books for sending me an ecopy of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting be to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Sólveig Pálsdóttir trained as an actor and has a background in the theatre, television and radio. In a second career she studied for degrees in literature and education, and has taught literature and linguistics, drama and public speaking, and has produced both radio programmes and managed cultural events.

Her first novel appeared in Iceland in 2012 and went straight to the country’s bestseller list. Her memoir Klettaborgin was a 2020 hit in Iceland. Sólveig Pálsdóttir has written seven novels featuring Reykjavík detectives Guðgeir Fransson and Elsa Guðrún in the series called Ice and Crime. Silenced received the 2020 Drop of Blood award for the best Icelandic novel of the year and was Iceland’s nomination for the 2021 Glass key award for the best Nordic crime novel of the year. Shrouded is the series’ fourth book to appear in English. 

Sólveig lives in Reykjavík.

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, Ragnar Jónasson and elusive Stella Blomkvist. 

Quentin was instrumental in launching Iceland Noir in 2013, the crime fiction festival in Reykjavik.