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A review by scorpstar77
The Silence of the Sea: A Thriller by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
4.0
When a big luxury yacht appears on the radar of Reykjavik's coast guard, it's not unexpected - a crew was supposed to be sailing a repossessed yacht from Lisbon back to Reykjavik with the crew and the family of the bank agent on board, and it was known that the ship had been having communications problems. When the coast guard can't raise any response on the short-range radio, however, they send someone down to monitor its arrival. Instead of docking gracefully, the yacht crashes into the marina, and a search reveals that no one is on board. The grieving parents of the bank agent - who have their youngest daughter, Sigga Dögg, with them as she was too little to go on the adventure with the rest of her family - hire attorney Thóra Gudmundsdóttir to help them determine the best way to claim their son and daughter-in-law's life insurance money - if they are, as presumed, dead - to help ensure they can retain the care of Sigga Dögg. (I gathered that Icelandic law would instead prefer to place an orphaned child with younger adoptive parents.) As she investigates the trip in the hopes of finding out what happened to the parents and their twin daughters who were on board, Thóra becomes more and more invested in solving the yacht's mysteries.
SUSPENSEFUL!!!! Told partly from Thóra's perspective as she cooperates with both the police and the bank that repossessed the yacht and employed the missing bank agent, and from the perspective of the family on board they yacht as their sailing lark turns into a complete nightmare, the story sort of works both forward and backward in time until the truth is revealed in a chilling conclusion. The detective in this story - Thóra - is never really in any danger herself, but the danger for the family on board is very real. Yrsa Sigurðardóttir manages to weave in the suggestion of a ghost throughout the story as well, casting some suspicions on whether or not an actual living person is the threatening presence on board the ship. I truly did not know who the perpetrator was until the author's reveal at the end - and even the reveal left me pretty chilled.
I learned some things about Icelandic culture and laws in this book, too, that I found interesting? A little strange? Possibly unnerving? But I do enjoy learning about cultures I'm not familiar with, and getting a good mystery to boot made this a good investment of my reading time.
SUSPENSEFUL!!!! Told partly from Thóra's perspective as she cooperates with both the police and the bank that repossessed the yacht and employed the missing bank agent, and from the perspective of the family on board they yacht as their sailing lark turns into a complete nightmare, the story sort of works both forward and backward in time until the truth is revealed in a chilling conclusion. The detective in this story - Thóra - is never really in any danger herself, but the danger for the family on board is very real. Yrsa Sigurðardóttir manages to weave in the suggestion of a ghost throughout the story as well, casting some suspicions on whether or not an actual living person is the threatening presence on board the ship. I truly did not know who the perpetrator was until the author's reveal at the end - and even the reveal left me pretty chilled.
I learned some things about Icelandic culture and laws in this book, too, that I found interesting? A little strange? Possibly unnerving? But I do enjoy learning about cultures I'm not familiar with, and getting a good mystery to boot made this a good investment of my reading time.