Translated by Lorenza Garcia
This was the first novel by Lilja Sigurðardóttir that I’ve read, and it won’t be the last. Dark as Night is actually the fourth in her ‘Áróra Investigation’ series, but having encountered Áróra, boyfriend Daníel and the other supporting characters I need to know more. Áróra isn’t a police officer, which confused me slightly at first – she’s a financial investigator – following the money. Daníel is a cop though! There are two strands to this story, effectively one each for Áróra and Daniel.
The first involves Áróra’s sister, Ísafold, who went missing three years earlier (I expect we find out more about that in the earlier novels). She is still searching for her. One day she receives a call telling her that a young child, unknown to her, is manifesting as the reincarnation of her sister, she’s about to end the call…
“… you haven’t told me a single thing about the case that hasn’t appeared in the newspapers or the media. Nothing that makes me think your daughter knows something she couldn’t have heard somewhere or that somebody told her.“
“No, you’re probably right,’ said Elísabet. “And of course she has said all sorts of things that are clearly nonsense. She once said that an ice-bear killed her!”
Áróra felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “What did you say?”
Later she tells Daníel that Ísafold always called her partner Björn her ísbjörn – her ice-bear. She has to follow this up. If what the little girl says is true, Ísafold must be dead.
Meanwhile, the same day Daníel arrives home to find a note on the table from his tenant, Lady Gúgúlú, aka Haraldur, a physicist when he’s not making costumes.
“Darling. Just to let you know I’ve moved out. I’ve had to go abroad unexpectedly, a family matter, and I won’t be back anytime soon. Forgive the short notice. I’ve paid three months’ rent into your account. Love u. Miss u. Bye.”
This isn’t what Daníel expected from his flamboyant friend. Soon something else will happen to make Daníel aware that Gúgúlú wasn’t telling the truth exactly, he left for some other reason, and he wants to help his friend.
At this stage we’re less than fifty pages in, but we’re already invested in Áróra, Daníel, and Gúgúlú especially. Lilja keeps the chapters short and snappy, moving the action along all the while, raising the tension as both threads develop. Daníel brings in Helene, his colleague to help him find Gúgúlú, while Áróra largely goes it alone – as we all guessed she would!
While I went with the flow and thoroughly enjoyed the novel, you do need to suspend your belief with both the concepts of reincarnation / communications from beyond the grave, and also quantum physics, as Lilja takes an existing but unproven concept and makes it real, leading us down twisty paths.
That aside, I just loved the characters, and that is what will get me reading the rest of the series. There are also some great descriptions of the Icelandic world, both urban and rural that helped set the scene so well. What a find!
Source: Review copy – thank you! Orenda paperback original, 243 pages.
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I’ve always quite liked it when authors integrate ideas of supernaturalism into their realistic settings (like Tana French, who is the master of balancing these elements in a crime novel), so this appeals, especially as it sounds like it’s done well.
The reincarnation strand worked particularly well. The physics I was less enamoured of, although it of course drove the rest of the plot. Very enjoyable though.
Discovering a writer with a reasonably lengthy backlist to explore is always such a pleasure!
It’s making the time to get into that backlist is the problem!
Gosh, that does sound interesting. I’ll tolerate more esoteric stuff from Icelandic authors than I do normally as there’s a fair amount of supernatural stuff in my beloved sagas. Is this a gory one or doable for me, do you think?
There’s some rough and tumble, but no real gore, so doable I reckon. You might want to start with Cold as Ice the first book in the series, in which Ísafold goes missing (but as I haven’t read that yet, I can’t vouch for the gore).
I like crime fiction that focuses on financial investigation – it’s a really interesting perspective. There’s a Canadian writer called Ian Hamilton who has a series about Ava Lee, a Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant and I LOVED them. I’ll keep an eye out for these.
Except the financial stuff is just her day job in this case mostly! A brilliant financial Icelandic noir I read last year was Dead Sweet by Katrom Juliusdottir https://annabookbel.net/dead-sweet-by-katrin-juliusdottir/ – I’ll look up the Hamilton books.