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Arctic Chill: A Thriller (Reykjavik Thriller) |  | Author: Arnaldur Indridason
Creators: Bernard Scudder, Victoria Cribb
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $15.29
as of 11/23/2009 03:51 MST details
You Save: $9.70 (39%)
New (21) Used (6) from $15.22
Seller: indoobestsellers
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 4315
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 0312381034
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.6934
EAN: 9780312381035
ASIN: 0312381034
Publication Date: September 15, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In this new extraordinary thriller from Gold Dagger Award winner Arnaldur Indridason, the Reykjavik police are called on an icy January day to a garden where a body has been found: a young, dark-skinned boy is frozen to the ground in a pool of his own blood. Erlendur and his team embark on their investigation and soon unearth tensions simmering beneath the surface of Ice land’s outwardly liberal, multicultural society. Meanwhile, the boy’s murder forces Erlendur to confront the tragedy in his own past. Soon, facts are emerging from the snow-filled darkness that are more chilling even than the Arctic night.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
Man's Fate November 9, 2009
H. Schneider (window seat)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Erlendur, currently my favorite cop (and until the next possible outing of Arkady Renko for the time being the only one that interests me), searches, again, for the purpose of this whole business of life and death. As usual he can find no answers. Life is a random mass of unforeseeable coincidences that govern man's fate.
In this 5th volume of the series, the main case is the murder of a 10 y old boy of partly Thai origin. He got stabbed on a winter afternoon on the way home from school. We follow police work in a maze of assumptions: racism? Kids gangs? Drugs related? A pedophile in the neighborhood?
In parallel, Erlendur has another missing person case, which does not take as much time as the dead boy, but distracts him to the extent of interference. (Can a relationship flourish that started by both partners cheating former spouses? No conclusive evidence that none can ever, but this one can't.)
We learn something about the specific Icelandic situation with immigration. The school of the story has just 30 foreign kids. That's negligible in comparison to many other European countries. The related problems seem small scale as well. The immigration level is given as 10%, which is also relatively low, and hence the reaction to it, the racist and nationalist noise, is also rather low. All this will give readers from the UK or France or Germany a feeling of `no big deal'. The real integration issue in most of Europe, religion, is not even mentioned.
All this gives the book a touch of being behind its time on big issues.
The police work here is also not on its most exciting level. One might find it a bit slow and undirected. As much as I like Erlendur (and I definitely recommend volume 6 strongly), this volume 5 is among the weaker ones so far. (And there is no bonus for proper political thinking in literature.) This would not be a good one to start the series with.
 Life and Death November 4, 2009
Ted Feit (Long Beach, NY USA)
It is strange to think of Iceland as a multi-cultural society, but the fact that it has a fairly substantial immigrant population provides the background for this murder-mystery. A 10-year-old half-Thai boy is found stabbed to death on a path to his home on the way back from school. And Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson has to investigate not only the murder but also the possibility of a hate crime.
In this latest novel featuring the Icelandic Inspector, he also confronts his own past: the estrangement of his daughter and son and the haunting ghost of his brother's tragic death when they were both young boys lost in a snow storm.
Indridason is the author of four previous novels, including the Gold Dagger award-winning "Jar City." This latest effort merely reinforces his reputation as being among the best of the contemporary Scandinavian crime novelists. He addresses not only the traditional crime-mystery themes, but also present-day social matters as well. The writing is beautifully simple, but poignant and elegant. Highly recommended.
always a good read from the scandinavian countries October 23, 2009
M. F. H. (Strabane,Pa)
It gets a little repititist in the begining but it turns into a real thriller. the ending is superb
 Lukewarm Indridason October 20, 2009
A. C. Walaszek (Madison, WI)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the weakest of the Indridason novels, with brutally slow pacing and long, drawn-out conversations that could have been heavily edited. The translation is especially tedious and the text is riddled with typographical errors. I have very much enjoyed the other Erlendur mysteries, especially "Silence of the Grave," and I look forward to Indridason's return to form (and a better translation and text).
Police Procedural and Social Examination of Iceland October 17, 2009
Douglas S. Wood (Monona, WI)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Arctic Chill is the seventh book in the Inspector Erlendur series from award-winning crime fiction novelist Arnaldur Indridason. Erlendur is a detective with the Reykjavik police. His introspection borders on morose, but then he's a lousy father (he has two troubled - or is that troubling? - adult children), he obsesses on his 8-year-old brother's death many years ago, and after all, he lives in Iceland. It can be confusing to keep track of time of events because it is always dark.
A 10-year-old Thai immigrant is murdered on his way home from school. Erlendur and his sidekicks meticulously pursue numerous angles, interviewing many witnesses and possible suspects. The victim's half-brother disappears for a day and when he turns up his mother hustles him into hiding. (The Icelandic cops take this rather better than most American cops would do.) Why? Is the brother also in danger? Is he a witness to the ghastly crime? Or maybe's the perp? Among other suspects there's the neighborhood pedophile, the raging racist teacher, the school-yard bullies, and the drug-dealing gangs.
Underlying the story and giving it depth is an examination of racial tensions between the largely homogeneous Icelandic population and the growing immigrant presence, especially from Asia.
Arctic Chill is a fine police procedural with a surprising, but not unfair ending. I enjoyed it less than the superb The Draining Lake: A Thriller (Reykjavik Thriller), but it was easily good enough to draw me back for more Erlendur.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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