Voices
Authors:
Arnaldur Indridason (translated by Bernard Scudder)
Retail Price (Softback): £6.99
Retail Price (Ebook):
ISBN: 9780099494171
First Published: 2007
Description:
It is a few days before Christmas and Reykjavik doorman and occasional Santa Claus, Gudlageuger, has been found stabbed to death in his hotel room in a sexually compromising position. It soon becomes apparent that both staff and dead man who has the most shocking secret...
Detective Erlendur quickly discovers that the placidly affluent appearance of the hotel covers a multitude of sins.
Vintage Books
Your Opinions and Comments
As the series develops I expected more to be made of the Icelandic culture or geography. I suppose in small countries even Swedish writer Henning Mankell whose Kurt Wallendar novels are set in Sweden felt the need for two of the series to have action partly outside of Sweden, despite the much larger population.
Despite adding little to my understanding of Icelandic culture 'Voices' is a good detective read. The story has enough twists and turns to keep me interested and gives a good sense of the gloom that surrounds the Detective, his past troubles as a child and present problems with his daughter.
The character of the detective develops as in the earlier books in this series and I felt the impending coming of Christmas was a great device to hurry the story along.
Driven on by his own issues and his desire to solve the crime, he doggedly follows clues and eventually finds the killer, and probably had a good Christmas too!
Good storytelling with a translation that only occasionally reminder me that it was a translation.
As the assistant in the Birkenhead branch of Waterstone's said when I was looking for a new author to try 'If you enjoyed Henning Mankell, you'll enjoy Arnaldur Indridason. I did.