Critical Mick

The CWA seal on the cover of Arnaldur Indridason's novel Silence of the Grave is no "refreshment puff" from his publisher's Marketing Department. Indridason may be from a small and icy island, but his crime fiction is worthy of worldwide attention.

Silence of the Grave involves a middle-aged detective named Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson and his two partners, Sigurður Óli and Elínborg, in a crime in modern Reykjavík. The novel opens when a young medical student, sitting awkwardly at a children's birthday party in a newly-developed suburban sprawl, notices that a crawling baby is teething away at a human rib bone.

An archeological mystery like Tana French's In the Woods, Erin Hart's Lake of Sorrows or Peter Clenott's Hunting the King, the Icelandic detectives in Silence of the Grave soon discover where the children's play unearthed the skeleton. The remains are exhumed at a glacial pace by a toothy expert from the university. This gives Erlunder time to develop subplots with the wife he abandonned two decades before and the daughter who has become an angry, degenerate druggie as a result.

Arnaldur Indridason craftes these characters and their conflicts at a latitude well above the standard. Legitimate feeling is poured into their situations. Even the scene with the ridiculous yet accurate psychic- a figure so cliche, so often handled so badly- works. This writing is worthy of the Crime Writers of America's Gold Dagger.

Intersperced with the contemporary chapters is an equally-gripping plotline that takes in the 1930's and 40's. One of the characters in this troubled, violent house is destined to be buried alive and discovered sixty years later- but who? Indridason builds his suspense at just the right speed, while delivering a portrait of Iceland past and present that readers cannot help compare to the Ireland or America of the same age.

If there is one criticism to be made, it is one explained away by the fact that Silence of the Grave is the fourth in a series. With its lack of resolution, this novel plants a strong compulsion to seek out the next installment.

Critical Mick says: Skjaarglt Kjooorsklangelt KfvoOOOOO

Read Nicholas Wroe's June 2006 interview with Arnaldur Indridason