Reykjavik Nights (2012)

Icelandic author’s latest novel, REYKJAVIK NIGHTS, nicely illustrates the qualities that make his books so deeply pleasurable.

A prequel to the series featuring detective Erlendur Sveinsson, REYKJAVIK NIGHTS gives a snapshot of 1970s Iceland, with traditional culture making way for American influences. Young police officer Erlendur takes on the ‘cold’ case of a dead vagrant, identifying with a man’s traumatic past. Indridason’s legion of fans will be delighted to see the gestation of the mature Erlendur; the novel is also the perfect starting point for new readers of the series.

In this riveting prequel set in late-1960s Reykjavík, Indridason plumbs the backstory of his series lead, somber Insp. Erlendur Sveinsson. As a young cop, Erlendur patrols at night, writes speeding tickets, and escorts drunks to the station house. When Hannibal, a tramp he’s acquainted with, dies of apparently natural causes, Erlendur starts to investigate on his own time. In the process, he learns about Reykjavík’s down-and-out population—which Indridason presents humanely and without sentimentality—and about becoming a detective. His obsession with Hannibal and what happened to him foreshadows the concerns of the more mature Erlendur in books set years later, such as 2014’s Strange Shores. Erlendur connects Hannibal’s case to that of a missing woman and a criminal enterprise that may strike readers as amateurish (one tactic is stolen from the then-new TV detective show Ironside). The investigation slowly but surely gathers powerful, page-turning momentum. This installment stands on its own, but it’s all the more impressive for giving new insight into Erlendur.

Since childhood, when he and his brother were lost in a blizzard in the mountains where he grew up, and he was found but his brother was not, Arnaldur Indridason's Inspector Erlendur has been obsessed with disappearances. Throughout this superb series by the Icelandic author, we've seen how deeply that tragedy has affected the glum detective. In Reykjavik Nights, we learn how his special interest propelled him into the top ranks of investigators. This prequel is set in the days when he was a young traffic cop, dealing with car accidents, street fights and such. When a homeless man he knows named Hannibal is found drowned in a pond near a waste-ground, and then a young woman goes missing, and both cases are allowed to go cold, Erlendur doggedly investigates them — even with no authority to do so. Hannibal's story, it turns out, is worth knowing. Like his protagonist, Indridason is calm, methodical and unassuming. With Reykjavik's nights — "so strangely sunny and bright, yet in another sense so dark and desperate" — as a backdrop, what starts out as a modest tale of an unfortunate death develops into a deeply involving tale of chronic neglect, drug addiction, spousal abuse and the unsavory nature of fate. For Erlendur, it may be something of a curse that he can never free himself of his obsession — even his leisure reading is consumed by books about horrible disappearances. But it's also something of a blessing in giving him a clear-cut role in life.

It’s an engrossing read, beautifully paced, richly textured, with something of the haunting melancholy of those long Icelandic nights. A real treat.