Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Indridason's superb sequel to 2017's The Shadow District, a melting glacier reveals the body of Reykjavík businessman Sigurvin, who has been missing for 30 years. The discovery comes as a shock to retired detective Konrád, who worked on the case back then, and leads to the rearrest and imprisonment of Hjaltalín, a disgruntled associate of Sigurvin's, who was arrested after Sigurvin vanished and released due to lack of evidence. Now dying, Hjaltalín insists that Konrád, who was never convinced of Hjaltalín's guilt, find the real killer by striking at Konrád's Achilles' heel, his vicious sham-medium father, "a bit of a devil." Konrád, who suspects he has inherited his father's evil nature, fears he can't restrain himself from violently attacking the criminals he pursues. Konrád painstakingly unravels a tangled skein of old betrayals and deceit in a city, Reykjavík, where he increasingly feels like a tourist, uncovering layer after layer of culpability. As in the old Icelandic sagas, the author strips bare such archetypal human concerns as revenge, honor, and family loyalty. Konrád, who still misses his beloved wife six years after she died of cancer, is an irresistible lead. Indridason is writing at the top of his game. (Aug.)
Kirkus Review
The reopening of a cold case brings sketchy characters out of the woodwork and triggers deep emotion in a retired detective. While exploring an Icelandic glacier, a group of German tourists stumble upon the well-preserved corpse of Sigurvin, a young man who disappeared 30 years ago. Konrád, the retired detective who worked the case, gets a call from his friend Svanhildur, a pathologist at the National Hospital, urging him to take a look at the body. A large head wound confirms that the death was most likely murder. Konrád has long believed that Hjaltalín, a man who threatened Sigurvin, was responsible for his death. The suspect was never brought to justice but suffered public infamy. When Hjaltalín, now elderly and frail, is taken into custody, he requests a meeting with Konrád, professes his innocence, and pleads to be exonerated--and then, days later, he dies. Once Konrád reluctantly begins a new investigation, he notices glaring omissions in the record and gets an odd visit from a woman whose brother, killed in a suspicious car accident, may have witnessed the crime as a child. His labyrinthine probe unearths secrets that have been buried for decades. Indridason methodically builds a portrait of Iceland with a large cast of nuanced characters unsettled by past events. In dredging up the past, Konrád must also confront his complex relationship with his own abusive father, whose murder was unsolved as well. The intricate plot poignantly depicts community crosscurrents, past and present. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Retired Rekjavik detective Konrád is drawn back to the world he knows best when the body of a missing person who haunted him turns up in a melting glacier. Wealthy fisherman Sigurvin's car was found at Rejkjavik's abandoned water tanks at the time of his disappearance, but, despite years of hunting, Konrád found no sign of the fisherman. Many believed that Sigurvin's business partner, Hjaltalín, was responsible, and he spent his life under that cloud. As media attention returns to Sigurvin's case, a woman begs Konrád to investigate the death of her brother, Villi, in a recent unsolved hit-and-run. When Villi was a young child, he met a strange, threatening man among the abandoned water tanks where Sigurvin disappeared. Konrád knows instinctively that Villi is the key to solving the Sigurvin mystery, and doggedly sets about breaking down decades of lies created to separate Icelanders' small worlds. In this rewarding gumshoe investigation focused on complex deceptions and unlikely coincidences, introspective Konrád faces his failures, both in marriage and policing here, and finds resolution, if not peace.
Library Journal Review
Retired detective Konrad returns to a cold case that has haunted him for three decades: the disappearance of a businessman whose body has just been found deep in the Langjokull glacier. First in a new series from CWA Gold Dagger Award and two-time Glass Key winner Indridason; with a 40,000-copy first printing.
