The Shadow Killer

March 5, 2018
At the start of Indridason’s well-crafted second thriller set in Reykjavík during WWII (after 2017’s The Shadow District), Eyvindur, a hapless traveling salesman, comes home from a trip to find that his partner, Vera, has left with all her clothes—then disappears himself. Meanwhile, Flóvent, a local policeman, examines the body of Felix Lunden, another salesman, shot by a bullet from an American military pistol, his forehead daubed with a bloody swastika. Lunden’s ethnicity may be important: he was the son of a Danish-German doctor living in Iceland, an important country to the Germans as a “home to some kind of pure Nordic, Germanic race.” That Lunden’s briefcase contains a spy’s cyanide capsule adds intrigue. The investigation takes Flóvent and his English-speaking partner, Thorson, who works with American MPs, into the heart of a Reykjavík overrun by U.S. soldiers, the sordid German obsession with eugenics, and the two salesmen’s lives. The plot may be a bit too ambitious, but Indridason does a fine job evoking the place and time.

March 1, 2018
It's 1941, and Reykjavik is teeming with foreign soldiers as American GIs arrive to take over Iceland's occupation from the British. Reykjavik detective Fl�vent and Canadian military liaison Stephan Thorson are paired again (after The Shadow District, 2017) to find the killer of a traveling salesman shot with an American gun and marked with a bloody swastika. They begin their investigation certain that their victim is Felix Lunden, tenant of the apartment where the body is found, but the case takes a turn when the deceased is identified as a rival salesman. Still, the case seems to revolve around the missing Felix, as Fl�vent and Thorson discover a German-issued cyanide capsule in Felix's sales suitcase and learn that his uncle is a Nazi scientist renowned for eugenics research. Indridason's voice, straightforward and tinged with sadness, works particularly well here, as he coaxes out tragic secrets and captures the occupation's impact with intriguing period detail, particularly the social impact of Reykjavik's emerging nightlife and the Icelandic Nationalist Party's Nazi legacy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2018

In the second thriller set in wartime Iceland (after The Shadow District), Flovent, Reykjavik's sole detective, investigates the murder of a traveling salesman, found shot to death in a basement flat with a swastika smeared on his forehead with his own blood. The bullet came from a U.S. military service pistol, so suspicion initially falls on a member of the occupying Allied forces. Flovent is joined by Thorson, a Canadian military police officer, in a series of intense interviews with residents familiar with the victim. Evidence emerges of questionable experiments a German doctor carried out on local schoolboys in the 1930s. But the detectives also suspect the victim's girlfriend and her British soldier lover. But before they can resolve the case, U.S. Counterintelligence seeks to take over the investigation, fearing the murder may have exposed a major counterespionage operation on the Continent. VERDICT Rather than penning a series of action sequences, Indridason builds suspense through a steady progression of extensive interviews with his sleuths doggedly prodding witnesses with dark probing questions. The result is a haunting and foreboding mood that will attract fans of Nordic noir. However, more thrills-oriented readers may find the satisfactory and unsurprising climax tedious. [See Prepub Alert, 11/27/17.]--Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2018

This second book in a new series (after The Shadow District) opens in summer 1941 with the discovery of a dead man in a Reykjavik apartment. Officers Flovent and Thorson begin by investigating the foreign soldiers swarming the city but end by traveling some dark paths indeed. From an internationally best-selling crime writer with a Gold Dagger and two Glass Keys to his name.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.