A night time fire in a home for the mentally and physically disabled kills five people and Jakob, a young man with Down’s Syndrome, is deemed responsible and locked away. A convicted paeodophile asks lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir to see if Jakob has been wrongly convicted, and the plot thickens from there. The beauty in Sigurdardottir’s novels lies in watching as the seemingly random threads of characters and storylines are woven together into a meaningful whole. Each character is well drawn and three dimensional; the protagonist Thora marches doggedly on through the icy Icelandic winters, investigating matters while dealing with an overcrowded home, a neurotic German boyfriend and a secretary who is both incompetent and offensive. She’s the kind of woman you want on your side. This is a good one though not quite as good as Sigurdardottir’s The Silence of the Seas or I Remember You.
