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<\/a>It\u2019s 1956, and Kristjan Krisjtansson, a rookie policeman from Reykjavik, Iceland\u2019s capital, arrives by boat on the island of Videy, not far off the coast. He has been sent to look into the disappearance of Lara, a 15-year-old girl who was living and working on the island for the summer. Her parents in Reykjavik haven\u2019t received her usual phone call this weekend, and they are concerned.<\/p>\nThe young policeman thinks something\u2019s not quite right when he talks to the couple who had hired Lara as their maid for the summer. They say that she abruptly announced that she was breaking her contract, packed up her belongings and left. They have no idea how she traveled or who might have taken her by boat. They seem indifferent.<\/p>\n
The problem is, neither her parents nor anyone else has heard from her. And by all accounts, she\u2019d been enjoying her summer job.<\/p>\n
Her employers, Ottar and Olof, a prominent Reykjavik couple living on the island for the summer, shrug her disappearance off as typical teenage behavior. While Kristjan, the young policeman, is still at Ottar and Olof\u2019s house, frustrated, he gets a call on their phone from a higher-up at the police department, telling him to stop troubling the couple. They are upstanding people. Leave them alone, he says. Kristjan complies, but he can\u2019t help but think the case is not over.<\/p>\n
Lara is never heard from again. Her body isn\u2019t found on the island or in the water. There\u2019s talk of suicide, but it doesn\u2019t add up: Why would she have packed up all her belongings?<\/p>\n
Her parents grow frantic, and the story becomes a national sensation in the press,<\/p>\n
On the 10th<\/sup> anniversary of Lara\u2019s disappearance, the continuing mystery is revisited in the news. A reporter interviews Kristjan, now a seasoned policeman. Kristjan doesn\u2019t tell the reporter how much he is still haunted by Lara\u2019s disappearance, how he feels guilty every single day, worried that he didn\u2019t do all that he could have.<\/p>\n Then on the 20th<\/sup> anniversary, another journalist wants a story, and Kristjan, at the behest of his superiors, obliges, however unwillingly. At this point, he\u2019d rather forget the whole thing \u2013 if only he could.<\/p>\n Then the authors take us to 1986, the 30th<\/sup> anniversary of Lara\u2019s disappearance, and the story intensifies. An ambitious young reporter, Valur Robertsson, is working hard at a weekly tabloid newspaper, aiming to make a name for himself and eventually be a top-notch investigative reporter on a leading newspaper.<\/p>\n Valur wasn\u2019t even born when Lara disappeared, but as he and his sister grew up, the story was a staple of Icelandic culture, the nation\u2019s most famous unsolved case. He talks his editor into letting him do an investigative series on Lara, and it has already sold a lot of newspapers. Now he\u2019s looking for something big, something new, to end the series in style.<\/p>\n As Valur and eventually his sister, Sunna, probe more deeply into Lara\u2019s disappearance, the tension mounts. It seems that someone will go to great lengths to keep the mystery from being solved.<\/p>\n The authors dedicate this book to Agatha Christie, \u201cwho inspired our love of detective stories.\u201d The carefully plotted, well-written, spellbinding story they have produced would no doubt make Dame Agatha proud.<\/p>\n Ragnar Jonasson is an internationally successful mystery writer. He\u2019s also a former TV newsman. Katrin Jakobsdottir, Iceland\u2019s prime minister since 2017, knows the country\u2019s power structure and how things work. Together, this team has produced an outstanding mystery that slowly and carefully builds to a surprising yet satisfying ending.<\/p>\n As a bonus, readers get a good look at Icelandic life and culture in the latter half of the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Iceland\u2019s most successful author has teamed up with the country\u2019s prime minister to write a mystery\/crime thriller that\u2019s one of the best books I\u2019ve read in quite a while. Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson REYKJAVIK. By Ranger Jonasson and Katrin Jakobsdottir. Minotaur Books. 363 pages. $19, paperback. It\u2019s 1956, and Kristjan Krisjtansson, a rookie policeman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1356,831,5,426,14],"tags":[1416,1414,184,1413,1415,410],"class_list":["post-3261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-fiction","category-international-thriller","category-mysteries","category-popular-fiction","category-thriller-suspense","tag-icelandic-fiction","tag-katrin-jakobsdotttir","tag-mysteries-2","tag-ragnar-jonasson","tag-reykjavik","tag-thrillers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3263,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions\/3263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}