My favourite Icelandic crime writer’s early novels are inventively gruesome (pins pushed into the feet of the murder victims, anyone?) but always interesting. This one, set in a health retreat that was previously a farmhouse, is no exception. It does however have a particularly bewildering number of characters with confusingly similar names -Birna, Berger, Berta. Trying to keep track of their familial ties to one another and dark intermingling histories requires the construction of an elaborate family tree as you go. But if you can’t be bothered doing that, just go along for the ride, like I did. Sigurdardotti’s heroine lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir is always good company, though some of her actions – like keeping a stolen murder victim’s diary to herself instead of handing it to the police – are fairly baffling. This novel is not my favourite of hers -try I Remember You instead – but it’s still worthwhile.
