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nataliya_x 's review for:
Snowblind
by Ragnar Jónasson
This is a town where nobody locks their doors. “There’s no point, nothing ever happens around here.” Until the time when two dead bodies are found and there’s more to do than hand out traffic tickets.
In the middle of a dark snowy winter, to the eyes of a newcomer a tiny town in the far north of already tiny Iceland, right below the Arctic Circle, surrounded by mountains and the sea and connected to the rest of the world only by a mountain tunnel in winter, a place where everyone knows everyone but some secrets still manage to stay buried may seem a bit claustrophobic and intimidating and oppressive.
In the middle of the last recession, a new grad Ari Thór Arason is lucky to get a job as a policeman in Siglufjördur, a former herring town of a thousand or so people in the far north of Iceland — even if it means leaving a life and a girlfriend behind in Reykjavik and adjusting to a life as a newcomer in a tight-knit community. All while he’s struggling with adjusting to relative isolation (especially if the road out of it is cut off by a snowfall), dark snowy winter and loneliness. A couple of dead bodies within the first few weeks in his straight-out-of training job do not help the stress levels as he’s just starting to learn his job.
Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson has the tone and feel of a classic murder mystery — and apparently the author translated quite a few of Agatha Christie’s works into Icelandic, so he must have been inspired by one of the greats in the genre. But he avoids an issue that Miss Christie ran into, as he explains in his afterword — unlike her Poirot, his protagonist Ari Thór is a very young man, still green behind the ears (if you excuse this sophomoric pun) and still has much to learn. He’s unsure, he makes mistakes, and that makes him actually interesting. He’s not armed with a dark and gritty past that gave him experience and resilience — the crutch of many writers making their protagonist a grizzled and dark hero — instead, we see the events that will eventually shape him into what we hope will be a competent detective.
This story moves along at a measured and unhurried pace. There are no thrills or adrenaline, just slow investigation and piecing things together in the classic police procedural way. Everything unfolds slowly and deliberately. It focuses on the atmosphere with the mountains oppressively looming over the tiny town, isolating it from the rest of the world, giving it strange beauty that borders on menacing. (Speaking if it, I wonder what the actual residents of Siglufjördur think of the way their town is shown here). It makes me want to visit this place — but in the middle of summer, please.
3.5 stars easily rounding up to 4.
I definitely plan to read more in this series — and I just found out that the US publisher for reasons baffling to everyone published this series out of order, taking book 5 and releasing it as book 2, skipping the developments of books 2-4. Huh? Why this happened must be the real mystery of this series.
“It was still snowing. This peaceful little town was being compressed by the snow, no longer a familiar winter embrace but a threat like never before. The white was no longer pure, but tinged bloodred. One thing was certain. Tonight people would lock their doors.”
In the middle of a dark snowy winter, to the eyes of a newcomer a tiny town in the far north of already tiny Iceland, right below the Arctic Circle, surrounded by mountains and the sea and connected to the rest of the world only by a mountain tunnel in winter, a place where everyone knows everyone but some secrets still manage to stay buried may seem a bit claustrophobic and intimidating and oppressive.
In the middle of the last recession, a new grad Ari Thór Arason is lucky to get a job as a policeman in Siglufjördur, a former herring town of a thousand or so people in the far north of Iceland — even if it means leaving a life and a girlfriend behind in Reykjavik and adjusting to a life as a newcomer in a tight-knit community. All while he’s struggling with adjusting to relative isolation (especially if the road out of it is cut off by a snowfall), dark snowy winter and loneliness. A couple of dead bodies within the first few weeks in his straight-out-of training job do not help the stress levels as he’s just starting to learn his job.
“Was there any hope of getting to the bottom of this case in a place where everyone knew everyone else so intimately? Old schoolchums, former workmates, friends and relatives; everyone seemed bound together with innumerable links.”
Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson has the tone and feel of a classic murder mystery — and apparently the author translated quite a few of Agatha Christie’s works into Icelandic, so he must have been inspired by one of the greats in the genre. But he avoids an issue that Miss Christie ran into, as he explains in his afterword — unlike her Poirot, his protagonist Ari Thór is a very young man, still green behind the ears (if you excuse this sophomoric pun) and still has much to learn. He’s unsure, he makes mistakes, and that makes him actually interesting. He’s not armed with a dark and gritty past that gave him experience and resilience — the crutch of many writers making their protagonist a grizzled and dark hero — instead, we see the events that will eventually shape him into what we hope will be a competent detective.
This story moves along at a measured and unhurried pace. There are no thrills or adrenaline, just slow investigation and piecing things together in the classic police procedural way. Everything unfolds slowly and deliberately. It focuses on the atmosphere with the mountains oppressively looming over the tiny town, isolating it from the rest of the world, giving it strange beauty that borders on menacing. (Speaking if it, I wonder what the actual residents of Siglufjördur think of the way their town is shown here). It makes me want to visit this place — but in the middle of summer, please.
“The smile and walk of a man, thought Tómas, who knew that he had escaped justice; because he’d done it before.”
3.5 stars easily rounding up to 4.
I definitely plan to read more in this series — and I just found out that the US publisher for reasons baffling to everyone published this series out of order, taking book 5 and releasing it as book 2, skipping the developments of books 2-4. Huh? Why this happened must be the real mystery of this series.