The Silence of the Sea

Starred review from December 21, 2015
When a yacht crashes into a Reykjavík harbor jetty in the prologue of Sigurdardóttir’s outstanding sixth Thóra Gudmundsdóttir thriller (after 2015’s Someone to Watch over Me), onlookers are shocked to find no one aboard—no captain, no crew, and no sign of the young family that was traveling with them. Margeir Karelsson and Sigrídur Veturlidadóttir retain attorney Thóra to investigate and provide proof of death for their missing son, his wife, and their twin granddaughters. At stake is the life insurance payout, as well as the fate of the twins’ two-year-old sister, left behind in the grandparents’ care. But why are there rumors that the yacht was cursed? Sigurdardóttir does a masterly job of weaving together the story of Thóra’s painstaking investigation with an account of the voyage and its horrifying spiral into disaster. In effect a locked-boat mystery enhanced with a hint of ghosts, this deliciously eerie variation on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians won the Petrona Award for best Scandinavian crime novel in 2015.

Starred review from December 15, 2015
Reykjavik attorney Thora Gudmundsdottir's sixth case (Someone to Watch Over Me, 2015, etc.) poses her a puzzle obviously inspired by the real-life 1872 case of the Mary Celeste--and fully worthy of its mysterious original. The Lady K, a yacht seized from bankrupt businessman Gulam and sailed from Lisbon to Iceland by a skeleton crew, arrives in Reykjavik harbor without a soul aboard. There's no trace of Capt. Thrainn or of his crew members, Halli and Loftur, or of gir, a member of the bank's resolution committee who made the trip with his wife, Lara, and their 4-year-old twin daughters, Arna and Bylgja. Despite the absence of any corpses, gir's parents, Margeir Karelsson and Sigridur Veturlidadottir, want the insurance company to pay the hefty policy he took out, and they want the court to name them guardians of Sigga Dogg, their surviving 2-year-old granddaughter--an uphill battle, Thora warns them. But she finds she can't accept these commissions without discovering what actually became of gir and Lara and their shipmates. In alternating chapters, Sigurdardottir follows Thora's painfully matter-of-fact investigation and goes back a few days to cover the Lady K's ill-fated final voyage, as a series of escalating misfortunes--a tangle with a container from a neighboring ship, the loss of radio communications, grisly discoveries on and off the yacht--leads to a wholesale breakdown among the shipmates that turns the trip into a journey to hell. The trick of alternating chapters between the present and the very recent past shouldn't work, but it does, producing a tour de force capped by a haunting final scene that will linger in your mind long after the cumbersome explanation of how the trick was worked.

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Starred review from January 1, 2016
When he's tasked with transferring a repossessed yacht from Lisbon to Reykjavik, regulatory official gir brings along his wife, Lara, and their young twin daughters to experience Lisbon. Then the family is unexpectedly forced to join the voyage to Iceland after gir is recruited to replace an injured crewman. Shockingly, after days of radio silence, the empty yacht enters Reykjavik harbor on autopilot. When the search for the passengers proves fruitless, gir's parents turn to attorney Thora Gudmundsdottir to help them claim gir's life insurance to improve their case for custody of gir and Lara's toddler, whom they were caring for during the trip. Thora's investigation of the family's finances refutes any arguments that they've skipped out on debts, but the Reykjavik police's investigation yields only further questions. Is the headline-grabbing wife of the former owner missing or lying low? How did the yacht's radio malfunction? As Thora methodically builds a case that the family has perished, gir chronicles the voyage as it evolves from hopeful beginnings to locked-room horror. Series star Thora takes a backseat to gir's account, but fans of Sigurdardottir's signature style of merging haunting supernatural elements with psychological thrills won't mind; this story's mystery is flawless and its eeriness unshakable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2016

Winner of the 2015 Petrona Award for best Scandinavian crime novel, this modern-day Mary Celeste sea story tells of a yacht that sails into Reykjavik's harbor; the crew and family members on board are all missing. Lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir is asked to investigate on behalf of the surviving relatives. Flashbacks revealing what happened to the vanished family compliment Thora's investigations and heighten the tension. VERDICT This eerie, suspenseful addition to the "Thora Gudmundsdottir" series stands on its own. For fans of Nordic crime fiction and horror writer John Ajvide Lindqvist. (Xpress Reviews, 2/12/16)

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2015

This sixth entry in the Thora Gudmundsdottir series from the internationally best-selling Sigurdardottir won the UK's Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. A luxury yacht sails serenely into Reykjavik harbor, never mind that there's not a soul on board.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.