Nowhere Books 2025 Bingo: A book in translation
Hildur Rúnarsdóttir is a police investigator on Iceland’s harsh and rather sparsely populated west coast. When she was only a child, her two younger sisters disappeared without a trace, and now she’s the head of the division for missing children in her part of the country. Her only remaining relative is her aunt, who she eats dinner with every Monday. Her aunt raised her after her parents died in a car accident about a year after her sisters went missing. Hildur surfs in the cold Atlantic Ocean to clear her mind of worries. She has a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with one of her neighbours, but neither wants to make it anything official.
Jakob Johanson is a police trainee from Finland, who always wanted to visit Iceland and has therefore decided to complete his mandatory training period there. In Norway, he has a five-year-old son that his ex-wife refuses to let him have any contact with. He knits to relieve stress and loves the chance to design knitting projects with unusual Icelandic yarns. He and Hildur complement each other well as partners, but Jakob is frustrated that there are parts of the job he has difficulties with since he can’t speak Icelandic yet and not all of the locals speak English.
Murders are rare in Iceland, so when Hildur and Jakob find themselves investigating the murder of an elderly local pedophile, they are surprised to find that it may be connected to the murder of a wealthy lawyer in Reykjavik. The two men seem to have absolutely nothing in common, but there is a strange calling card left with both of the bodies. The body of the old man was found in the ruins of a cabin crushed by an avalanche, while the security cameras in the parking garage where the lawyer was repeatedly run over by his own car were offline at the time of the murder. The killer seems to be meticulous and careful to not leave any traces. Then there is a third murder, and this time, the victim is someone with a direct connection to Hildur herself.
I put myself on the waiting list at my local library for this book, after reading this article about the author in the Guardian.
Full review here.