Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Middling Murder Mystery (BINGO #9!)

Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (author), Bernard Scudder (translator)

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Last Rituals is the first in series focusing on Thóra Guðmundsdóttir, Icelandic lawyer and divorced mother of two. We are introduced to Thóra following the discovery of the body of a young German student Harald Guntlieb at a university in Reykjavík, his eyes cut out and strange symbols carved into his chest. Police wasted no time in making an arrest, but the victim’s family isn’t convinced that they have the right person. They ask Thóra to investigate on the recommendation of her old professor and […]

So I guess I need to work on my Icelandic…

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I am continuing on my Icelandic murder reading spree, thanks to the great suggestion of some other Cannonballers, via the Cannonball Read Chat Facebook group.  Thanks, peeps! This is book two of the “Erlendur series” that has been translated from Icelandic into English.  I guess books one and two didn’t merit translation?  For some reason, the English series started with book three.  The completist in me is desperately trying to ignore that. Let’s move on. Inspector Erlendur is back, as he and his fellow detectives investigate a […]

A rainy and murdery winter pick-me-up

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In prepping for my move from the south to the Midwest in winter I asked some folks for reading suggestions in two categories: light fluffy happy things to cheer my spirits, and dark winter-y tales to remind me things could be worse, in a schadenfreude sort of way. This is the latter, and it definitely delivered. Set in rainy chilly Iceland, an old man is found murdered in his home. Motive unclear, and nothing too strange other than a note left on the body that […]

Miserable Weather + Terrible Taxes = Happy People?

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If I’d just seen Michael Booth’s The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia, I never would have read it. First of all, the cover of the Finnish edition is hokey as hell. Bad publisher. Go to your room and think of what you’ve done. Second of all, what would you think, if you saw a book that’s just 300 odd pages about Scandinavia and Scandinavian people? Boring, right? Booth mentions very early on that many people to whom he talked about his book project […]

Dark Love Letter

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“To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.” I have had a bit of luck with first time authors of late, and Hannah Kent is no exception. Her debut work, Burial Rites, is a gripping novel- all mood and emotion. It’s a story gaining speed like a stone rolling downhill, for there is only one way to go. Ms. Kent writes in Burial Rites about the last instance of capital punishment in Iceland.  But I […]

Cold in Iceland

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Burial Rites is Hannah Kent’s first novel and an auspicious start to her career. Set in 1828-1830, the plot is based on real people and factual events surrounding the last execution of a criminal in Iceland. For those who prefer their fiction historical and who have enjoyed Margaret Atwood’s Alias, Grace or the novels of Geraldine Brooks (who is thanked in the author’s note), this is a book you will want to read. In 1828, a well known herbalist and healer (some said sorcerer) named […]



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