#RivetingReviews: Barry Forshaw reviews REYKJAVIK and DEATH AT THE SANATORIUM by Ragnar Jónasson

Reykjavik by Katrín Jakobsdóttir and Ragnar Jónasson

Is it wise for presidents and prime ministers to try their hand at writing crime novels, however commercially tempting it may be? The Clintons, Bill and Hillary, both took on the challenge, but wisely left the heavy lifting to experienced novelists as co-authors. So perhaps Prime Minister of Iceland Katrín Jakobsdóttir took note of their example when she asked one of the leading Icelandic practitioners of the genre, Ragnar Jónasson, to join her in writing Reykjavík. Jakobsdóttir has said that she undertook the task to take her mind off the daily business of politics, but she’s no writing dilettante. In fact, she wrote her master’s thesis on the Icelandic crime novel and is a disciple of her country’s éminence grise in the field, Arnaldur Indriðason. So how does Reykjavíkstack up? Thankfully, Jakobsdóttir would appear to have learned from the best – both her co-author and her inspiration. This is Nordic noir at its most authoritative. The disappearance of a teenager from the bleak island of Víðey has remained an unsolved mystery until tenacious tyro reporter Valur investigates. The cold case is to furnish devastating revelations, tied in to the year in which the book is set, 1986 (when Reykjavík celebrated its two hundredth birthday), with insightful observations about the Icelandic character and the frigid environment. Leaving aside any finessing the seasoned Ragnar Jónasson may have provided for his political co-writer, it would seem that another career might well be on the cards for Katrín Jakobsdóttir after leaving the corridors of power.

Death at the Sanatorium by Ragnar Jónasson

After Ragnar Jónasson recently wrote the novel above in tandem with the prime minister of his native Iceland, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, aficionados of the writer may have been pleased to see that the succeeding Death at the Sanatorium is unadulterated Jónasson, and comfortably up to his customary standard. The book starts with a useful Golden Age crime reading list; hardly surprising, given that the author has translated into Icelandic the novels of Agatha Christie. The setting is a crumbling sanatorium in which only a single wing with six employees remains open. One of the hospital’s nurses, Yrsa, is savagely killed (the name of the victim perhaps an in-joke referencing the Queen of Icelandic crime writing, Yrsa Sigurđardóttir), but the murder is unsolved for twenty years until criminologist Helgi Reykdal decides to crack the cold case mystery. It’s Jónasson on top form.

Reviewed by Barry Forshaw

REYKJAVIK and DEATH AT THE SANATORIUM

Written by Ragnar Jónasson

Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb

Published by Michael Joseph ()

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Barry Forshaw’s books include Simenon: The Man, The Books, The Films; Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide; the Keating Award-winning Brit Noir and Euro Noir. Other work: Nordic Noir; Death in a Cold Climate, Sex and Film and the British Crime Writing encyclopedia (also a Keating Award winner). He edits Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk).

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