With all the verbiage
expended on so-called 'depressive detectives' from Scandinavia, its
often overlooked that the so-called depression of everyone from
Martin Beck to Harry Hole is neither exclusively Scandinavian, nor is
it firmly in some sort of Nordic tradition. Indeed, part of the
appeal of this strand in detective fiction has been the way it sheds
light on the roles of individuals within societies who have watched
the balance between personal responsibility and societal
responsibility shift, with crime often the result.
But the traditional
sort of Nordic depression, something different from Germanic angst,
was founded on the basic idea of the individual battling alone in the
dark and cold world. It is what we hear in the music of Jan Garbarek,
it is what we found in Ingmar Bergman, those of us old enough to have
been entranced by each successive film questioning our place in the
universe, not just society.
This is what I have
found in Arnaldur Indridason, and perhaps more than any of the
current crop of crime writers from the North, his Erlendur is a
throwback to that kind of Scandinavian world. And to
my mind, Strange Shores is a detective novel Bergman could have felt very much at
home filming. I'd been wondering about Erlendur's fate as his
colleagues worried about his car spotted on the eastern Icelandic
wilderness, and masterfully, Indridason has traced his footsteps.
As always, Erlendur is
searching for some clue about his childhood, about the disappearance,
and presumed death, of his younger brother when they got lost in a
sudden storm. His almost morbid interest in other disappearances is
piqued by the story of a young woman, Matthildur, who disappeared in
a storm on the same night 60 British soliders went lost in the
Eskifjordur valley. Her ghost was said to haunt her house, and to
have moaned when her husband Jakob, killed by another storm while
fishing, was buried.
The story is simple.
Erlendur goes back and forth among the older people of the area,
those who remember Matthildur and Jakob, prodding and poking them to
turn over buried bits of the past. Staying in the now-derelict
cottage where he lived as boy, and where his brother disappeared, and
getting colder every night, he moves almost relentlessly, with the
quiet fervour of a man seeking to know what is ultimately unknowable.
Much of Scandinavian
crime fiction is about changing societies, and Erlendur has always
stood for the older style of life, even in Iceland, the most remote
of those nations. But here the story is all about the past, all about
the grave things that can be hidden in even the smallest, most
tightly knit, communities. It is about the basic drives to find
meaning from life, when life is harsh and death a constant presence.
Erlendur will 'solve' the mystery of Matthildur, and he will discover
something about his brother, and remember more about himself. The
ending, if inevitable, is written with an absolutely deft and honest
touch—avoiding the melodramatic or romantic. It is for Erlendur the
culmination of his life, or anyone's, and it resonates in the
reader's heart long after the book is done.
Strange Shores by
Arnaldur Indridason
Harvill Secker, £12.99,
ISBN 9781846557118
Note: This review will
appear also at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)
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