Genres: Mystery Police Procedural | Thriller Police Procedural
Posted: December 15, 2017
THE SHADOW DISTRICT begins when an elderly man is found dead in his bed, not entirely surprising. The case isn't treated as suspicious but a routine autopsy of Stefan Thordarson uncovers something odd. The man had been killed. This case does not go to police inspector Erlendur, the central figure in many previous books, but a female officer called Marta who discusses it with her retired detective pal Konrad. Checking the old man's belongings uncovers old newspaper clippings about Rosamunda, a young woman who was found murdered during WW2, when British soldiers and American GIs had been stationed in Iceland.
We return to Reykjavik in 1944 when Ingiborg, a young woman whose parents have forbidden her to fraternise with soldiers, stumbles upon the murdered woman behind the National Theatre. But she is there with her GI boyfriend, and they leave, hoping nobody has seen them. Everyone knows everyone, however, and soon the military police call to her door. Thus we get an insight into investigations of the past, with a local detective co-operating with an Icelandic- descended Canadian MP, trying to avoid red tape.
The contemporary murder reawakens the cold case, but are the deaths in fact connected? Investigations by Konrad allow us a glimpse into Icelandic life, with a breakfast consisting of porridge, liver sausage and rye bread. We also learn about the folk tales told by the farming people; a student calls them a mirror of society. Relationships were strained with the influx of foreign servicemen, some of whom took advantage of women; other women found new work and prospered. And THE SHADOW DISTRICT was largely residential, some of it good, some slums, with the Theatre at one end and the meat packing district at the other. This is a good allusion to respectability declining unseen behind a frontage. Arnaldur Indridason has woven a masterly web of lies, tragedies and societal change in his latest work; Iceland has seldom seemed so close to home.
Book Summary
A deeply compassionate story of old crimes and their consequences, The Shadow District is the first in a thrilling new series by internationally bestselling author Arnaldur Indridason.
THE PAST
In wartime Reykjavik, Iceland, a young woman is found
strangled in 'the shadow district', a rough and dangerous
area of the city. An Icelandic detective and a member of the
American military police are on the trail of a brutal killer.
THE PRESENT
A 90-year-old man is discovered dead on his bed, smothered
with his own pillow. Konrad, a former detective now bored
with retirement, finds newspaper cuttings reporting the WWII
shadow district murder in the dead man’s home. It’s a crime
that Konrad remembers, having grown up in the same neighborhood.
A MISSING LINK
Why, after all this time, would an old crime resurface? Did
the police arrest the wrong man? Will Konrad's link to the
past help him solve the case and finally lay the ghosts of
WWII Reykjavik to rest?
Minotaur Books
November 1, 2017
On Sale: November 7, 2017
Featuring: Konrad; Stefan Thordarson; Ingiborg
360 pages
ISBN: 1250124026
EAN: 9781250124029
Kindle: B06ZZLY4F9
Hardcover / e-Book