Book Review of Reykjavík by Ragnar Jónason and Katrín Jakobsdóttir

(Translated into English by Victoria Cribb.)

 

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Icelandic chiller thriller with a resolution!

(This review is based on a free review EPUB from the publisher via Net Galley UK)

The narrative of this well-written and competently-translated novel stretches from August 1956 to November 1986 (there is a reference to prior events in 1955), with most of the story happening in the run-up to the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavík when a decades-old missing persons case is revealed to be a murder case which comes to a head and is resolved on the day of the summit meeting itself.

This structure sets the scene for the thriller whilst giving the readers a series of snapshots of Icelandic society changing (and the economy and population growing) as changes in communications, travel and entertainment technology bring the outside world closer to Iceland than it has ever been before, before the world’s most powerful leaders arrive in Reykjavík to thrash out their differences and focusing the whole world’s attention there.

Almost all the action takes place in Reykjavík or its suburbs, or on the “remote” island of Videy, which bears about the same geographical to Iceland’s capital as Hayling Island does to Havant. (This may or may not help British readers from North of the Trent.) The one, interesting, exception is when the heroine has to travel to her home community in the North of Iceland for her brother’s funeral. Buildings there being painted in bold colours (as they are in Port Stanley and some Hebridean communities) in a brave attempt to stop the settlement blending any further into the landscape than it already has.

The heroine herself is brave and brilliant, though she only discovers this in herself when tragedy forces her to take on her older brother’s mantle and complete his journalistic investigation into what might happened on Videy before either of them was born. She has to cope with generational differences as well as those of politics and social class. Though when push really comes to shove, she gets prompt support from those she thought most conservative and disapproving of her -even as someone she trusted acts with monumental treachery. Though the story shows us some divisions within Icelandic society, these fade away as soon as the shocking truth, which no-one can excuse or accept, is exposed.

If there is a moral here (and in Nordic thrillers there often isn’t) it is that it’s not the presumption of innocence that allows the rich and powerful to get away, literally, with murder, but their own blithe assumption of immunity. Guilt and innocence are irrelevant to those who are never required to account for their own actions. And in the summer of 2023, we have all seen a lot of evidence of that!

Reykjavík by Ragnar Jónason and Katrín Jakobsdóttir is published in the UK by Michael Joseph on the 17^th of August 2023