The Shadow Killer, by Arnaldur Indridason
Translated
from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
New York,
NY: Minotaur Books, 2018
Originally
published in Iceland with the title Pýska
húsid in 2015
List of
main characters:
Stephan
Thorson/Stefán Thórdarson
Flóvent
Felix
Lunden
Rudolf
Lunden
Hans
Lunden
Vera
Brynhildur
Hólm
The
Shadow Killer is the second in
what I hope will be several books in a series about the detectives Thorson and Flóvent. The
first book in the series, The Shadow
District, introduces the two main characters (Thorson and Flóvent). The first book takes place more or
less in the present and links a crime committed in the present to a crime from
the past. The Shadow Killer
reintroduces Thorson and Flóvent,
but this time when they meet on their first case.
When I
finished reading the first book in the series, I had questions that I hope will
be answered in subsequent books in the series:
◊ Will the author, Arnaldur
Indridason, continue the themes introduced in the first book in the series?
◊ For example, will he continue to use folktales?
◊ And will he allow female characters, instead of male
characters, to interpret them for readers?
It seems to me, based
on my reading of the two books in the series available in English, that Indridason will focus mostly on his two main
characters. He weaves in history, culture, and literature, but only to further
his stories about the detectives working on their cases.
Click here
for my blog post about The Shadow
District, the first book in the series.
The
Shadow Killer is a quick, fun
read. I started to worry, in fact, after about 100 pages, that it wasn’t going
to be noir enough for me to write about it for my blog, but I was wrong. It has
a lot of the elements that many films noir from the 1940s have: a femme fatale;
murder, with the accompanying murder investigation; two detectives that serve
as two of the main characters; espionage. It even takes place during World War
II. I can easily picture it as a neo-noir film.
The
Shadow Killer takes readers to
back to the beginning of Flóvent’s
and Thorson’s working partnership. Flóvent works for the Iceland Criminal
Investigation Department in Reykjavík; Thorson is a Canadian volunteer for the
American military. An Icelandic salesman has been murdered, and it’s possible
that he was killed with an American service weapon. That possibility brings
Thorson into the case because American interests also have to be protected. He
and Flóvent have to figure out the salesman’s true identity, find his killer,
and find out if the motive behind the killing has anything to do with wartime
espionage.
The
setting and the period are clear from the beginning, but it’s rather late in
the novel when Indridason gives Flóvent’s and Thorson’s perspectives. I really
like the description of Flóvent’s home life, which gives some historical detail
as it relates to Flóvent personally:
. . .
They [Flóvent and his father] usually spent their evenings chatting or
companionably listening to the wireless, and Flóvent knew that his father
treasured these moments. He was a family man who had lost half his family in
one fell swoop when his wife and daughter died of the Spanish flu. He and
Flóvent bore their sorrow in silence. He had never gone out looking for another
woman after his wife died. He was a member of the last generation of Icelanders
to experience true hardship, having lived through war, depression, and
epidemic—all without uttering a word of complaint. (pages 102–103)
I also
like how Indridason gives a rather sympathetic view, from Thorson’s
perspective, of what the Icelanders call The Situation, the fraternizing of
British and American service men with Icelandic women:
. . . A
new consignment of American troops had recently arrived, and he [Thorson]
thought their numbers now equaled those of the British and Canadian troops in
the dance hall. The local women had already begun to transfer their affections
to the Yanks and he soon saw why. The Americans had a lot more money to throw
around. They were better groomed. Had broader grins. They were Clark Gable to
Britain’s Oliver Twist. (page 105)
Iceland
is going through upheaval on many levels: politically, economically, and
culturally. And it’s all because of the beginning of World War II. In the
meantime, Icelanders are still dealing with the effects of the flu epidemic of
1918, World War I, and the Great Depression.
One of
the suspects in Flóvent’s and Thorson’s murder investigation is the murdered
man’s ex-girlfriend, Vera. Readers don’t actually meet her until later in the
novel, but her name comes up early in the investigation. It soon becomes
apparent that she is used to getting what she wants and will resort to almost
anything to do so. Indridason describes Vera as a femme fatale without ever
assigning the label to her. Here’s part of a scene in which Thorson talks to a
former boyfriend of Vera’s, the blacksmith:
The blacksmith gazed out of the kitchen window at the
sunset, as if weighing up whether he should add something else. Thorson waited
patiently, and after a long interval the man cleared his throat.
“Is there more?” asked Thorson.
”No, it’s just she said something that you probably
ought to know about. It’s only just come back to me. I thought nothing of it at
the time, because she was obviously messing around. I don’t even know if I
should be telling you because you’re bound to take it too seriously. Read too
much into it.”
“What did she say?”
“There was an accident. A man
drowned in a trout lake up on the moors near here. And she said I could go fishing
with her fiancé and come back alone. That accidents happened. Then she laughed.
She said it light-heartedly. I don’t think she meant anything by it, but . . .
.”
“Now you’re wondering if she was
only half joking?”
“No, like I said. I didn’t think
anything of it at the time.”
“But now her boyfriend in
Reykjavík has been found dead.”
“I just wanted you to know. I’m
sure she didn’t mean anything by it. [. . .] There’s something about her,
something that draws men to her, though I can’t put my finger on it,” the man
said in parting. “Some kind of spell that makes you do anything she wants. I
wouldn’t trust a word she says, but whether she’d go so far . . . .”
“Well,” said Thorson, “we’ll
see.” (pages 258–259)
Later,
when Thorson talks to Vera, he wonders what she is capable of after hearing
what the blacksmith had to say about her.
Thorson didn’t immediately
answer [Vera]. He thought of the blacksmith and his encounters with her [Vera]
in the smithy, and although his own interests didn’t lie that way, he could see
why the man had fallen for her. How she’d got Billy [Wiggins, the British
soldier] eating out of her hand. Why it wouldn’t take her long to hook a GI,
fresh off the boat, if she had a mind to. Everything she did was on her own
terms. The only question in Thorson’s mind was how far she’d be willing to go
to get what she wanted. (page 285)
Vera
isn’t the only suspect in the murder investigation. Flóvent and Thorson also
have questions about Felix Lunden. Is Felix a double agent working for the
Nazis? Was he the murderer’s real target? Did his father and uncle also work as
spies and train Felix for his secret work? Hans Lunden, Felix’s uncle, is interested
in helping the Nazis, and Icelandic literature is what draws him initially to
Iceland:
Brynhildur [Hólm] took another sip of water, then
explained that Hans [Lunden] was an admirer of the sagas with their
descriptions of warriors and feats of great prowess and daring. He had immersed
himself in the country’s medieval texts, including the Eddic poems, with their
Norse myths and tales of the ancient Germanic past. To him, the heroic
forebears of the Icelanders were supermen by modern standards, and he dreamt of
recreating them. He conducted anthropological research into Nordic racial
superiority at an institute set up by Himmler in Berlin, as part of the
Ahnenerbe, or Ancestral Heritage Group. That was why he had come to Iceland in
’39. Hans had been confident that when war broke out, the Germans would occupy
Iceland and then it would be possible to embark on serious genetic and
anthropological studies of the Icelandic population, of their Germanic heritage
and Viking blood—the very origins of the Icelanders. Hans had intended to
direct the project himself. Rudolf [Hans’s brother] was to be his right-hand
man. (pages 266–267)
Although
literature doesn’t play nearly as large a role in The Shadow Killer as it did in the first book in the series, it
still gets a mention, and it still has some significance in the narrative.
It’s a
bit of a twist to have the first book in the series (The Shadow District) be, in actuality, the final installment as far
as the narrative’s time line is concerned, the final installment as far as
Flóvent and Thorson are concerned. But both The
Shadow District and The Shadow Killer
have piqued my curiosity, and I plan to read more books when they are available
in English translation. I want to see how each novel, each case, fits into the
overarching puzzle of the entire series. And maybe the questions I had after
reading the first book in the series will be answered as I go along.
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