By Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
Paperback, £9.99
Another excellent crime thriller from Icelandic author Sigurðardóttir. Three seemingly disparate stories intertwine tighter and tighter, leading to a convincing (and for me, gasp-inducing) conclusion.
A man finds out he had a younger sister who died – he has no recollection of her, but family neighbours tell him that she lost her life when very small. An operator at a lonely NATO station seems to be struggling, and begins to get strange calls at work. And the book opens with a search and rescue team heading for an isolated cottage, where four missing people might still be alive… two urban couples who are missing amid wild Icelandic winter. Who is the predator? And who is the prey?
Sigurðardóttir creates a sustained atmosphere of unease, both among characters and in the increasingly menacing landscape. Aspects of the uncanny appear and are gone.
This is a standalone novel, and I was glad to find it, having enjoyed her Thóra Gudmundsdóttir series enormously. I read it on a holiday and it was a perfect mental break… as long as you are ready to be very tense.
Review by Bethan