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A review by valparaiso
Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson
3.0
I’m reluctant to be too critical about most books I read because I have a sincere appreciation for the amount of work that goes into writing a novel.
Snowblind, a thriller set in a remote northern coastal village of Iceland, had so much promise. But ultimately it fell flat for me because of the stilted and dumb-it-down writing style of the author, Ragnar Jonasson. I will give him a bit of a pass because this is his first book. But he did not give his readers credit for their intelligence and ends up describing in painfully bland play-by-play terms what is happening in the story—as if we can’t figure it out on our own. This is surprising because he is the English to Icelandic translator of 16 Agatha Christie’s books.
On a redeeming note, I enjoy stories where the place becomes a character in its own right, which is certainly the case here. I’m fond of Iceland and have spent time there in the winter so the foreboding, brooding nature of its weather was familiar to me and something I appreciated.
A rookie cop from Reykjavík comes to town and is mentored by the grizzled veteran. He leaves a girlfriend in the capital city and dallies with a local girl. There’s nothing to do in winter time and nothing ever happens here. Until it does. There were flashbacks to a murder from 20+ years earlier in another country that just didn’t seem to fit with the story. The relationships and back stories of the characters felt stilted and flat. The twist at the end felt more like a slight turn, a let down.
The book was worth finishing—as thrillers often are—but not energetically, which puts this at three stars for me. I found myself plodding through scenes that should have been keeping pace with their potential. There was just too much dead space and time in the book for the thriller it was trying to be.
Snowblind, a thriller set in a remote northern coastal village of Iceland, had so much promise. But ultimately it fell flat for me because of the stilted and dumb-it-down writing style of the author, Ragnar Jonasson. I will give him a bit of a pass because this is his first book. But he did not give his readers credit for their intelligence and ends up describing in painfully bland play-by-play terms what is happening in the story—as if we can’t figure it out on our own. This is surprising because he is the English to Icelandic translator of 16 Agatha Christie’s books.
On a redeeming note, I enjoy stories where the place becomes a character in its own right, which is certainly the case here. I’m fond of Iceland and have spent time there in the winter so the foreboding, brooding nature of its weather was familiar to me and something I appreciated.
A rookie cop from Reykjavík comes to town and is mentored by the grizzled veteran. He leaves a girlfriend in the capital city and dallies with a local girl. There’s nothing to do in winter time and nothing ever happens here. Until it does. There were flashbacks to a murder from 20+ years earlier in another country that just didn’t seem to fit with the story. The relationships and back stories of the characters felt stilted and flat. The twist at the end felt more like a slight turn, a let down.
The book was worth finishing—as thrillers often are—but not energetically, which puts this at three stars for me. I found myself plodding through scenes that should have been keeping pace with their potential. There was just too much dead space and time in the book for the thriller it was trying to be.