Publisher's Weekly Review
In Indridason's excellent second mystery (after 2005's Jar City), a skeleton, buried for more than 50 years, is uncovered at a building site on the outskirts of Reykjavik. Who is it? How did he or she die? And was it murder? The police wonder, chief among them the tortured, introspective Inspector Erlendur, introduced in Jar City. While an archeologist excavates the burial site, several other narratives unfold: a horrifying story of domestic abuse set during WWII, a search for missing persons that unearths almost-forgotten family secrets involving some of the city's most prominent citizens, and Erlendur's own painful family story (his estranged, drug-addicted daughter is in a coma, after miscarrying her child). All these strands are compelling, but it's the story of the physical and psychological battering of a young mother of three by her husband that resonates most. And the denouement of this astonishingly vivid and subtle novel is unexpected and immensely satisfying. Indridason has won the CWA Golden Dagger Award. Author tour. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Icelandic mysteries hit the U.S. ground running last year with the appearance of Indridason's outstanding Jar City. This equally fine follow-up returns to the theme of buried pain, with the action centering on the discovery of a human bone at a construction site near Reykjavik. Inspector Erlendur Sveinnson is on the case, but the trail, which leads back to World War II, has gone very cold indeed. Erlendur (Icelanders use first names) has a very personal reason for his abiding interest in missing persons, and that--combined with the fact that his drug-abusing daughter is in the hospital in a coma--opens the door for plenty of backstory regarding the detective's troubled history. With a narrative that jumps between the 1940s and the present--without giving away whodunit--the novel generates a sort of emotional claustrophobia, its characters trapped in a world where the pain of the past, though often submerged, is always with us. Indridason has definitely vaulted onto the A-list of Scandinavian crime authors. --Bill Ott Copyright 2006 Booklist
Kirkus Review
The secret of a buried body reaches back generations to a grim murder. A birthday party comes to an abrupt halt when a baby is found gnawing on a human bone. After the infant's brother T¿ti sheepishly reveals that he found the bone at a construction site down the street, stolid Reykjav"k police inspector Erlendur Sveinsson (Jar City, 2005) cordons off the area as a crime scene, to the chagrin of the builder. An archaeologist determines that the female corpse has been buried for at least 40 years. Erlendur dubs the case the Bones Mystery. Bitterly estranged from ex-wife Halld¿ra, he learns that their drug-addicted daughter Eva Lind has landed in the hospital comatose and pregnant. When he's not tracking down elderly neighbors and relatives of former residents of the house with the buried body, Erlendur undertakes a bedside vigil with another comatose patient. The doctors instruct him to talk to Eva, and he digs deeper and deeper into his heart to come up with things to talk about. Erlendur's sidekicks, Sigurdur Óli and El"nborg, also grapple with personal problems. Meanwhile, a man named Gr"mur is terrorizing his battered wife and her three children in a subplot that has its own connection to the Bones Mystery. This winner of the CWA Golden Dagger Award is a resonant psychological crime novel rich in unflinching observations about family relationships. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
A skeleton is unearthed in Reykjavik, Iceland, while Inspector Erlendur uncovers a troubled tale of violence and family shame in the award-winning follow-up to his American debut, Jar City, which won the Nordic Crime Novel Award. Indridason lives in Iceland. Author tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.