On the surface, the
glacial surface, Operation Napoleon is very different from the
Erlendur novels which have been so successful for Arnaludur
Indridason. It's a fast-moving thriller, about a Nazi bomber lost in
an Icelandic storm in 1945, which the Natnajoekull glacier gives back
in 1999. And it's an airplane that the US wants desperately to
retrieve, and retrieve in absolute secrecy.
Indridason handles the
thriller neatly, building the plot elements slowly, with the same
misdirection thrown out by the authorities—the thriller element,
will the Americans get the plane, and more important get away with
what they do to protect their secrecy, is well done, but the real
thrill is in the mystery, as we weave our way through the
misdirections thrown out by the authorities.
But the real story is
the struggle of a young woman, an Icelandic bureaucrat called only
Kristin, to find out what has happened to her brother, leading a
rescue party, who stumbled across the recovery operation, phoned her,
and was tortured and left for dead. And that struggle illuminates, in
stark detail, some of the differences between the Icelandic and
America character, in the wake of the whole debate about Iceland's
role as a key point in the military web of the USA. It is a case of
simple versus complicated, nuanced against simple, straight-forward
against very crooked indeed. And it's one Indridason obviously
relishes.
He stacks the deck
somewhat, in a playful way that for me undercut the suspense. The two
intelligence agents chasing Kristin are called Ripley and Bateman,
who are of course two of American fiction's most memorable
sociopaths. Which makes a comment, in its way. The original
commander, trying to recover the plane back in the Forties, is called
Miller, which suggests the simplicity of the so-called 'greatest
generation'; and the two Icelandic brothers who originally witnessed
the crash seem to share some values. While his replacement in 1999
has a Lithuanian name, Vytautus Carr, which kept me thinking of Red
October, while the man he puts in charge on the ground is called
Ratoff, which seems a bit of overkill.
If the secret, once
revealed, is a little anti-climactic, and somewhat unconvincing (it
all happened, obviously, despite the crash) it's an audacious plot
that reflects back on the roots of our modern malaise; perhaps the
greatest generation weren't all so great after all. It's impressive
to see Indridason turn from the slow build of tone in the Erlendur
series to something far more staccato, and do it so well.
Operation Napoleon by
Arnauldur Indridason
translated by Victoria
Cribb
Vintage, £7.99, ISBN
9780099535638
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