Voices (Detective Erlendur)

It is the week before Christmas and we are in the far north, almost guaranteed a snowy, white holiday. But it you looking for a cozy mystery, perhaps you should look elsewhere, because this book would seem to fall distinctly in the category of 'noir', defined in Merriam-Webster as "crime fiction featuring hard-boiled cynical characters and bleak sleazy settings." Yes, cynical...and yes, bleak...and in "Voices" that is a very enjoyable combination for the reader.

The holidays are approaching, and in the basement of Iceland's very popular Grand Reykjavik Hotel, a body has been found. The victim of the brutal stabbing is the hotel's doorman, discovered half dressed in the suit he was going to wear to play Santa at an employee party. Found with his pants down around his ankles, in a very compromising position, in the nasty, empty little room in which he lived. Called in to investigate is Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson and his team, each with their own very distinct personalities. Erlendur is himself a rather bleak yet compelling character. Divorced for decades, alone, almost a stranger to his two now grown, troubled children, he might seem at first an unlikely sympathetic character. But as with all the folks here, we learn that what we at first see is not all there is to the story.

For example, Erlendur is still haunted by the death of his younger brother when they were both just children, the boy lost forever on a snowy Icelandic moor, while Erlendur was found and saved.

"He was older and was responsible for his sibling. It had always been that way. He had taken care of him. In all their games. When they were home alone. When they were sent off on errands. He had lived up to those expectations. On this occasion he had failed, and perhaps he did not deserve to be saved since his brother had died. He didn't know why he had survived. But he sometimes thought it would have been better if he were the one lying lost on the moor."

That death and his sense of responsibility for it has colored ever aspect of his life since and is perhaps one reason he find himself at an almost total loss as to how to deal with his own daughter Eva Lind, a drug addict, suffering her own guilt over the death of her prematurely born daughter. But it is also why he is so dedicated to his job.
And besides the murder, there is also woven through the book another little subplot of a young boy who has been very severely beaten, maybe by his father. But again, there is more to this than meets the eye at first.
Yes, there is a lot of angst in beautiful, snowy Iceland this Christmas.

While the story and the setting and the writing itself are spare and a bit bleak, the author's great ability to develop these characters, including even the victim, and a glimpse of Icelandic culture, raises what might otherwise be an ordinary police procedural to another level. The third in a series, along with 'Jar City' and 'Silence of the Grave', 'Voices' is a very fine stand alone mystery. I know that I will be going back and reading the previous two and then will catch up on the latest, 'The Draining Lake'.

Now if I could just get the hang of these Icelandic names.....

Iceland is a nasty place as portrayed in the 'thriller' novels of Arnufur Indridason - gloomy, gritty, petty - and its folk have a taste for drugs, prostitution, and confrontational behavior. If I were the Director of Tourism in Iceland, I tell you, I'd pay Indridason a handsome bonus to write about some other country. This novel Voices, the third in a series featuring Police Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson, is the nastiest yet, with a lurid crime that leads to more and more perverse ugliness. Poor Erlendur is confronting another Christmas, that joyless holiday which he tries to ignore but which inevitably dredges up thoughts of his childhood tragedy. Most of the novel takes place in a hotel -- a tourist destination -- staffed by repulsive and evil-tempered goons. There's a good chance that one of them murdered Santa in flagrante in the hotel basement.

The first two novels in the series - Jar City & Silence of the Grave - were every bit as gritty and sleasy, but some half-concealed humanity in Inspector Erlendur made one empathize with the poor man and care about his agonies with his drug-addled daughter and alienated son. Well... in Voices, I could still squeeze out a little sympathy for Erlendur, but only because by now he's almost a black-sheep uncle. If you haven't read the prvious two novels, I truly doubt you'll get past chapter five of this one. One has to wonder, by the way, why Erlendur hasn't discovered prozac or celexa, in a country where 'drugs' are not unavailable. Is there a cultural prejudice against relief from depression except illegally?

And there's one glaring flaw in the none-too-credible mystery plot. The victim Santa was a boy soprano of great musical promise, whose voice "broke" without any warning in the middle of a showcase concert. After this sudden onslaught of puberty, he never recovered any musical talent. The experience essentially destroyed him and his family. Unfortunately, this is utterly implausible. Boys' voices do change in puberty, and the period of 'transition' can be problematic vocally, but such an instantaneous collapse of all vocal training is absurd. Now I know why lawyers snarl at Perry Mason and other 'courtroom' novels, and doctors smirk at 'hospital' dramas on the tube. Actually, I've never read a novel about musicians that showed much sense of how "we" get through life.

This is a great book. It engaged my interest from the beginning through the final, 313th, page. It's the fourth Arnaldur Indridason novel that I've read. I would be hard pressed to compare this with the other three. Perhaps there's more contemplation and less action than in the others.

The central story is that of a hotel doorman/handyman who lives in a dingy little room in the hotel basement. About a week before Christmas, dressed as Santa, he is stabbed to death in his room. He was getting ready to serve as Santa at a hotel party.

Leading the police team investigating the murder is Inspector Erlendur, Indridason's star. Erlender does not roam far in this book; he checks into a room at the hotel and uses it as his base. He gets to know several of the hotel employees.

I don't want to say too much more. I don't want to spoil this excellent mystery. The reader learns a lot about the victim, whose life took a pivotal turn when he was twelve, some thirty-six years before his death.

There are many fascinating twists and turns, particularly at the end. Indridason is a master at character development. His prose is stark and powerful.

Highly recommended

I enjoyed Silence of the Grave and was encouraged to read the next in the series. Wow, it's very different, much deeper and stranger, with a strong dash of irony, a truly unusual plot and a quirky and well-drawn cast of characters. Detective Erlunder, the main character, emerges more clearly in this book and his back story takes on real weight and emotional power. Much closer to what I loved about the Kurt Wallandar series. Highly recommended for fans or Nordic noir and intelligent mysteries in general.

I am a big fan of Arnaldur Indridason. I found this particular book to be the most interesting of the series because of the backstory of the choirboy and the way the author was able to portray that world. Not only is Iceland an exotic locale for most readers, but the world of boy sopranos and child stars is an exotic locale of its own.

My one criticism of the series is the constant dwelling on Detective Erlender's guilt and grief over the death of his brother, which happened many years earlier. No matter how searing, it does not ring true that he would be tortured by it constantly even after all that time. Plus, the subplot about his drug addict daughter is not believable---that is, she as a character is not believable. I wonder if the author did not invent these two ponies so that they could be trotted out whenever the reader needed a break from the police procedural. However, they are tedious, and since Erlendur is portrayed as an intelligent and sensitive man, it is not likely he would have completely abandoned his children. In "Voices" he tries to link it to his brother's death but that really makes no sense. And also, people don't become drug addicts because their parents get divorced, or even if they get divorced and their father disappears, so that explanation for the daughter's addiction doesn't fly.

Voices, another Icelandic gripping tale of murder and missing persons by Arnaldur Idridason, adds a special macabre Holiday (Christmas) twist to a page-turning, often ironic and amusing police procedural. It is my favorite of Idridason's novels. However, that is not saying that Jar City, his initial police procedural, and Silence of the Grave aren't his best-written. From the discovery of the body of a hotel doorman half undressed in a Santa outfit to the exposure of an unexpected murderer, the story proceeds unflaggingly. In addition, the details about life and characters that parade through the hotel provide lively local color, including our brooding detective's inriguing encounters with the mudered man's father and sister, a hotel maid, and a collector of recordings of boy choir singers. Great holiday mystery read! Purchased from Amazon in quality softback for an enticingly low price.

Santa Claus is murdered at a Reykjavik, Iceland hotel just before Christmas, and Detective Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson stays on at the hotel for the six days it takes to solve the mystery and pin the murderer.

Erlendur is aided by his usual team of Detectives Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli. He is also visited at the hotel by his troubled daughter Eva Lind. Erlender remains at the hotel- staying in a cold room with a broken radiator- for the duration of the book. Everyone keeps asking Erlender... when will he return home?

It turns out middle-aged Santa was once a child star in Iceland; a nationally renowned Choirboy from Hafnarfjordur with an ethereally beautiful voice. His young career ended abruptly and tragically. Only two mostly unknown, out-of-print, collecter's-only records of his angelic voice remain from his moment in the light.

As an adult, the man carried on with a life of obscurity. For decades he held the post as doorman (and seasonally Santa Claus) at the un-named Reykjavik hotel, where he lived rent-free in a small dingy room in a dark basement corridor. Who would want to kill this man? And in the circumstances in which he was found...

The case hits close to home for Erlendur, who finds himself taken back to his own childhood tragedy and its lifelong repercussions on his life and character.

Arnaldur Indridason tells his story chamber style, with several thematically-overlapping storylines woven together to form a whole. Some common threads are childhood trauma, sibling bonds, familial bonds, and the undeniable power of the early family situation in shaping the individual.

VOICES is not exactly a pleasant experience to read; but it is a powerful and worthwhile one. Indridason is a depthful and talented writer. In VOICES, he takes a classic hotel/confined space, murder-mystery-whodunnit, adds dashes of dark humor, shines a brutal spotlight on some dark corners of society, asks some very big questions... and comes out with a surprisingly touching and profound piece of literature.

(PS: If you like reading modern fiction about things Icelandic, I recommend THE TRICKING OF FREYA by Christina Sunley).

CWA winner Indridason is among the current crop of Nordic mystery authors writing some of today's best crime fiction. His exceptional series features brooding Icelandic Det. Erlendur - a man obsessed with solving crimes, while his own personal life is in shambles. This time around, Erlendur is called in to investigate the stabbing of a hotel Santa during the Christmas holiday rush and he has his hands full, not only with the case but also with ongoing personal issues. Moody, atmospheric and intelligent - Indridason just keeps getting better.

If you haven't read Arnaldur Indridason's mysteries, you're in for a major treat. This artist knows how to tell a story, weave in plots and sub-plots, create characters who are so real and compelling, he will keep you up at night or keep you turning the pages until you're at the last page.

I'm thrilled his latest mystery is out and I'm going to stop writing here so I can order it pronto.

This is the third book in the Inspector Erlendur series and I am trying to read them in order (8 more to go with a new prequel just published). Although I am not a great fan of mysteries I do enjoy one with more depth and character study than you normally find in many series. Indridason is a very good writer and Iceland a great backdrop to his stories.
I found this third book the weakest of the three I have read but by no means a bad book. It’s just more of a “who done it” that the first two books in the series. You see here Erlender is confronted with finding the motive and killer of a hotel Santa Clause found stabbed to death in his Santa suit with his pants down (I’ll let you fill in the blanks.) He slowly goes through the list of suspects as we get a well-developed back story of the murder victim. It appears he was a great choir boy singer up until the age of 12 when his voice changed. Recording of his young voice are now much sought after by collectors.
Several parallel stories are included as well as building on the Erlendur’s character as we learn of his brother’s going missing during there childhood. The impact of this and his relationship with his Father are learned. There are numerous other Father/Son and Sibling relationship conflicts in the books story line. I think it comes down to people growing into their own voice.
The conclusion is good and it makes sense and somewhat predictable, at least in hindsight. I read it at the beach and would consider this a good beach read. This is a well written “who done it” set at Christmas in cold, dreary Reykjavik, Iceland.