My favorite kinds of mysteries are the ones that involve some historical aspect. I love a contemporary tale that’s tied to the past, with the detective managing to both figure out who did the killing, and what the secret is behind some historical mystery. Yrsa Sigurdardóttir’s LAST RITUALS fulfills this requirement so admirably that she instantly moves to the top of my list of favorite Nordic detective fiction writers.
Set in the exotic locale of Iceland, the book covers two very different stories: the horrible death and mutilation of a university student, and the history of witch burning in Iceland coupled with a series of lost documents that the dead student was investigating.
Its subtitle states it’s “an Icelandic novel of secret symbols, medieval witchcraft, and modern murder,” and for once, publisher’s hyperbole hits the mark. But this isn’t as esoteric as Umberto Eco or as annoying as Dan Brown. Instead, dammit, it’s fun!
A young German graduate student is found horribly mutilated, the police quickly find a likely suspect, but the student’s family is not convinced they have the right man. They decide to hire a local, and that’s how we enter the world of lawyer Thóra Gudmundsdôttir. She’s a divorcée with two children, trying to make ends meet and happy to have the commission from the family. But the case is freakin’ creepy, and the author does an excellent job of highlighting its black magic aspects. Her protagonist is admirably levelheaded at the appropriate times, and squeamishly creeped out at others, which lends to the air of realism throughout the book that makes it so believable.
The strength of this work is that we get to see a lot of actual detection going on – not just the work by our heroine Gudmundsdôttir as she slowly pieces together the night of the heinous crime, but also the detective work that the ill-fated German student undertook to find his own goal. This is where so many American stories bog down. They end up relying on violence or cinematic action scenes to replace the interesting intellectual slog of police work and intuitive research. If anything else, author Sigurdardóttir deserves high praise for her depiction of how people might actually go about doing detective or research work.
The only issue is that the style seems a little flat, but it’s hard to tell if this Sigurdardóttir’s fault or the fact that it’s a translation (by Bernard Scudder), and I hate to mention it at all, because if it hadn’t been translated into English, I wouldn’t be reading this novel. Set in the fine tradition of Nordic detective novels with a strong protagonist and impeccable plotting, and coupled with a fascinating historical mystery analogue, this book is one of my finds of the year. Highly recommended. –Mark Rose
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Have you tried Val McDermid’s ‘Grave Tattoo’? It’s a wonderful mystery involving Fletcher Christian and the possibility of a missing Wordsworth poem. I’m not even a real historicals person and I was fascinated.
I read a lot of translated fiction and I definitely noticed a disconnect between the author and her translator. But like you, I didn’t let it dampen my enjoyment of the book. I’ve heard that another novel by Yrsa Sigurdardottir is on its way. I can’t wait.