ICELAND AUTHOR · FICTION · MURDER
Arnaldur Indriðason
Also known as: Arnaldur Indridason
The Inspector Erlendur Series is a popular murder mystery series featuring Reykjavík detective Erlendur Sveinsson. Written by Icelandic author Arnaldur Indriðason, the series is published in the U.S. by Minotaur Press and consists of more than a dozen novels. Mýrin (Jar City), the third book in the series, was the first to be translated into English. Mýrin was also adapted as a 2006 film entitled Jar City, starring Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson as Erlendur. Note: Reykjavik Nights, while written later, is a prequel to the Inspector Erlendur series (#0).
FROM THE MOMENT O. J. SIMPSON BECAME A SUSPECT IN this double murder case, it was "in the air," perhaps as in no other case within memory, that he might get off despite the conclusive evidence of his guilt.
— from Outrage
Most acclaimed
Reykjavik Nights
Erlendur has recently joined the police force as a young officer and immediately sinks into the darkness of Reykjavik's underworld. Working nights, he discovers the city is full of car crashes, robberies, drinkers and fighters. And sometimes an unexplained death. A homeless man Erlendur knows is found drowned. But few people care. Or when a young woman on her way home from a club vanishes. Both cases go cold. Two lost people from two different worlds. Erlendur is not an investigator, but his instincts tell him their fates are worth pursuing. How could they be linked? Inexorably, he is drawn into the blackness of the city's underbelly, where everyone is in the dark or on the run.
Outrage
But in the Simposon case there was a mountain of incriminating evidence pointing inevitably and absolutely to the defendant's guilt. What happened? What went wrong? Much of that evidence, including some of the most vital pieces was never presented to the jury by the prosecutors; there were disastrous lapses in the prosecution's strategy, which allowed damaging defense testimony to go unchallenged; prosecutors Clark and Darden failed to stand up to the abuses of Judge Ito, thereby hurting their credibillity with the jury; the final summations of the prosecution were weakly constructed, listlessly argue, and, most unforgivably, inadequately prepared.
Dans l'ombre
Un voyageur de commerce est retrouvé dans un petit appartement de Reykjavik, tué d'une balle de Colt et le front marqué d'un " ss " en lettres de sang. La police soupçonne rapidement les soldats étrangers qui grouillent dans la ville en cet été 1941. Deux flics novices vont mener l'enquête. Flovent, l'unique enquêteur de la police criminelle d'Islande, qui a fait un stage à Scotland Yard, et Thorson, l'Islandais de l'Ouest, né au Canada, et désigné comme enquêteur militaire par les Britanniques et les Américains pour ses compétences linguistiques. Indridason décrit les bouleversements de cette île de pêcheurs et d'agriculteurs qui évolue rapidement vers la modernité avec l'afflux des soldats. Les femmes s'émancipent, rêvent de la ville, on soupçonne que, malgré la dissolution de leur parti, les nazis n'ont pas renoncé à trouver des traces de leurs mythes et de la pureté aryenne dans l'île. Par ailleurs on attend en secret la visite d'un grand homme. L'enquête connaît de multiples rebondissements qui dressent un tableau passionnant de l'Islande de la " Situation ", cette occupation des jeunes soldats britanniques et américains qui sèment aussi le trouble parmi la population féminine. Elle dévoile aussi des enquêteurs tenaces, méprisés par les autorités militaires mais déterminés à ne pas se laisser imposer des coupables attendus. Dans ce roman prenant et addictif, le lecteur est aussi fasciné par le monde qu'incarnent les personnages que par la résolution de l'intrigue, imprévisible.