Reykjavik Book Review
Reykjavik is a murder mystery by Ragnar Jonasson and Katrín Jakobsdóttir, the latter of whom was the presdient of Iceland. The conceit of this mystery is that a missing girl 50 years ago was never found on an Island with only a handful of residents and every so often the event gets dug up in the newspaper to bring it back to people’s foremind. There are enough clues to the events that makes you think foul play x 1000, and some powerful people bury the investigations.
An intrepid reporter decides to do more digging into this unsolved mystery and as he gets closer to solving the mystery, mysteriously dies as well. This then kicks off a tertiary investigation into the reporter’s death and the original girl’s disappearance. Things are wrapped up relatively neatly at the end of the story.
So far so good, the mystery however, is unsolvable by the reader. There aren’t enough hints and foreshadowing to let you know who the culprit is. this detracts from the story enough that I deduct 2 stars.
I also highly recommend that you listen to this book instead of reading because the narrator pronounces the names perfectly. Icelandic names are different enough from english that I find listening to the story rather than reading it adds quite a bit of atmosphere.
The book is also written in a fairly straightforward manner. The pacing is quite good as well. Just a pity that the reader cannot solve the mystery.
Read only if you are really into mysteries and don’t mind reader-unsolvable ones.