Reading in Reykjavík

Genre: Thriller Year of publication: 1991 Setting & time: Mostly Memphis, Tennessee, with brief stops and other places around the USA, and the Cayman Islands; contemporary Rookie tax lawyer Mitch McDeere accepts a lucrative job offer from a prestigious law firm, but finds out to his dismay that all is not what it seems within the firm. Caught between a rock and a hard place, he has to use his wits and find a way out of the hole he has dug himself into. Review: Many years ago I overdosed on John Grisham novels and swore I would never read another of his books again, but since I have committed myself to finish all the books easily available to me that are on the challenge list, I knew that sooner or later I would have to tackle The Firm . When I started reading it soon became apparent that distancing myself from Grisham had made me forget what it was in the first place that I had disliked about the books. The Firm is a hugely enjoyable thriller, even if the protagonist ...

According to Amazon UK this book is due out in Britain in an English translation in July. I could find no information about publication in the USA. Original Icelandic title: Aska (Ash) Genre: Murder mystery Year of publication: 2007 No. in series: 3 Series detective: Thora Gudmundsdottir Type of mystery: Murder Type of investigator: Lawyer Setting & time: Reykjavik and the Westman Islands, Iceland, 2007. Three desiccated corpses and a head are discovered in the basement of a house that is being excavated after having lain under volcanic ash since the 1973 volcanic eruption in the Westman Islands . It falls to lawyer Þóra (Thora) to represent the man who found the bodies in the basement of his childhood home, since certain facts of the matter have cast suspicion on him, not only for the deaths of the four men, but also for the recent death of a woman from the islands who is in some way connected to the head and possibly the bodies as well. Yrsa Sigurðardóttir keeps getting ...

I must admit up front that I have a soft spot for Josephine Tey, so you may expect some prejudice in the review ;-) Year of publication: 1949 Genre: Mystery Type of mystery: Kidnapping Type of investigator: Lawyer Setting & time: England, contemporary A teenage girl accuses two women of having kidnapped her and held her against her will for a month. The case seems to be solid, but solicitor Robert Blair, retained by the accused to speak for them, is convinced of the innocence of his clients and sets out to prove it. This is the second Tey novel I read that effectively breaks one of S.S. Van Dine's detective story writing rules , and I admire her for making it so readable, because it is rule no. 7 that is broken: There shall be but one crime, and that crime is murder (my rephrasing). It is difficult to sustain reader interest in a mystery without a corpse for nearly 300 pages, but Tey not only pulls it off, she does it so well that I could hardly put the book down. It is w...

This book is getting downgraded - seems the Top Mysteries List I started working with had some errors in it and this book had been put on the list by by a fan who felt it belonged there. No matter, it's a good mystery anyway. Year of publication: 1933 Series and no.: Perry Mason, no. 1 Genre: Mystery Type of mystery: Murder Type of investigator: Lawyer Setting & time: Los Angeles, USA; 1930s. Story: A woman comes to Perry Mason to get help in keeping certain facts from being printed in a sleasy tabloid, facts that can hurt not just her marriage but also the career of a local politician. But then her husband is murdered and things get complicated. Review: Before starting reading this book, my very first Perry Mason story, I had assumed that I would be reading a legal mystery-thriller, perhaps something that would take place at least partially in a courtroom. This belief comes from my mother, who was a fan of the Perry Mason TV show when she was younger and always talked o...

This book is due to be published in Britain and the USA in April. Original Icelandic title: Sér grefur gröf Genre: Murder mystery Year of publication: 2006 No. in series: 2 Series detective: Þóra Guðmundsdóttir Type of investigator: Lawyer Setting & time: Snæfellsnes, Iceland; contemporary Story: Þóra’s client, a hotel owner in Snæfellsnes (south-western Iceland), wants to sue the people who sold him the land for the hotel on the basis of the place being haunted. This would not be a problem if the hotel were an ordinary one, but it is a new age health spa and some of the staff claim to be sensitive to that sort of thing, the owner included. Þóra goes up there to investigate and prepare the lawsuit (or rather to dissuade the client to go on with it), but arrives in the middle of a murder investigation. The architect who designed the hotel has been brutally murdered, and when a second person connected with the hotel is murdered as well, Þóra’s client is arrested on suspicion ...

Icelandic title: Þriðja táknið (literally: The Third Symbol ) Genre: Mystery Year of publication: 2005 No. in series: 1 Series detective: Þóra Guðmundsdóttir Type of investigator: Lawyer Setting & time: Reykjavík (mostly), Iceland; contemporary Story: Icelandic Lawyer Þóra (Thora in English) is hired by the parents of a German history student who was found murdered in the offices of the history department of the University of Iceland. They want her to help Matthew, an investigator they have sent over from Germany, to find out why their son was murdered and why his body was mutilated. Since they are not convinced that the suspect the police have arrested is guilty, they also want Þóra and Matthew to find the real killer. The victim had been researching and comparing the history of witch hunts in Germany and Iceland and was the leader of a clique that practiced magic rituals. The mutilation of his body is connected to a magic spell found in an old grimoire, so it would seem l...

This time I read two novels by the author, one each with his two series sleuths. Titles: The Hollow Man (alt. title: The Three Coffins) , The Red Widow Murders No. in series: 6, 3 Year of publication: 1935 (both) Type of mystery: locked-room mystery, whodunit, howdunit Type of investigator: amateur, retired professional Setting & time: London, 1930’s (both) Some themes: Locked rooms, poison, the French Revolution John Dickson Carr is one of the Golden Age mystery writers. He was an American, but lived in Britain for a long time and set many of his books there. He was a very prolific writer during the peak of his career, and wrote most of his books under two different names: his own, and the pseudonym Carter Dickson. He had two series detectives: Dr. Gideon Fell, a professor of lexicography about whom he wrote as Carr, and Sir Henry Merrivale, written under the Dickson name. In addition he wrote non-series books, many of them historical novels. The Hollow Man is one of Carr’...