Nightblind

September 15, 2017
A second case looms for Ari Thor Arason, half the police force of the north Icelandic town of Siglufjordur, when the other half gets shot in an abandoned house.Nothing much has happened in the house near the entrance to the Strakar tunnel since 1961, when one of the twins living there took a fatal header from its balcony. And Inspector Herjolfur, a recent arrival to the community, wouldn't even be investigating the report of someone seen inside if Ari Thor weren't down with the flu. As it is, his patrol ends abruptly with a shotgun blast that sends him to the hospital, hovering between life and death. Will it also send Ari Thor, who campaigned unsuccessfully for the position of inspector, into Herjolfur's place? Not a chance. Instead, the powers that be summon Tomas, the boss who preceded Herjolfur, back from Reykjavik to take charge of the case. So Tomas is also on hand when an even more recent arrival is stabbed to death. To Ari Thor's chagrin, his old chief insinuates himself into this case as well. It looks as if the eternal second fiddle (Snowblind, 2017) will have enough time on his hands to take care of his son, Stefnir, who's almost a year old, when his physician wife, Kristin, accedes to the local hospital's pleas that she return to her job. Maybe Ari Thor will even have the leisure to notice that corruption threatens the local political establishment and that Kristin is thinking seriously of leaving him. The plotting is rudimentary, but the final surprise carries a real shock; the excerpts from a 1982 diary pack a punch of their own; and of course the advent of the Icelandic winter is likely to chill hearts even below the Arctic Circle.

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Starred review from October 16, 2017
Set five years after the action of Snowblind, Jónasson’s excellent second thriller featuring Ari Thór Arason to be published in the U.S. finds Ari Thór passed over for the position of inspector in the small Icelandic town of Siglufjördur, a setback mitigated by his reunion with his girlfriend, Kristín, and the birth of their son, Stefnir. When Herjólfur, the man who got the inspector’s position, dies after being blasted at close range by a shotgun near an abandoned house, Ari Thór’s former superior, Tómas, oversees the investigation. Ari Thór and Tómas step on some powerful toes as they follow leads pointing to the town’s mayor, Gunnar Gunnarsson; phone records show that Herjólfur called Gunnarsson late at night shortly before the attack. The mayor’s claim that the conversation was about traffic strikes the pair as implausible. Ari Thór soon begins to feel like a “stranger in a place where everyone was connected and no one could be trusted completely.” Jónasson plants clues fairly before a devastatingly unexpected reveal, without sublimating characterization to plot. Agent: David Headley, DHH Literary Agency (U.K.).