Reading in Reykjavík

Originally published in April 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. The Flanders Panel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte is a murder mystery tied up in a chess-game in a painting and in reality. The painting is a 15th century panel by a Flemish master, which the heroine, an art restorer, must clean and restore before it can to be auctioned off. She discovers a hidden inscription in the painting, and when her ex-lover is murdered and a mysterious person starts leaving cards with chess moves on them where she can find them, it looks as if the two events are connected. She receives assistance in solving the mystery from a chess-player, and from her two best friends, an art gallery owner and a slippery antiques dealer. This is a good, spooky, twisty mystery with a chess game at its heart. Even if you know nothing about chess, you can still enjoy it - I only know how the chessmen move around the board, and I liked it. 3 stars. --- The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö is a tota...

The first book in this Swedish series, The Ice Princess , was published in English earlier this year, and according to Amazon.co.uk, this one will be published (in hardcover) in February 2009, under the title The Preacher . Icelandic title: Prédikarinn Original Swedish title: Predikanten Series detective: Patrik Hedström (assisted by his colleagues and his girlfriend, writer Erica Falck) No. in series: 2 Year of publication: 2003 Type of mystery: Murder Type of investigator: Police Setting & time: Fjällbacka, Sweden, contemporary Story: The corpse of a young woman is found in a ravine in the small Swedish town of Fjällbacka and beneath the body lie two skeletons of young women who had disappeared more than 2 decades earlier. All three had been tortured in similar ways before dying of strangulation, so everything points to the same killer. Patrik Hedström of the local police heads the investigation while his heavily pregnant girlfriend deals with invasions of visitors seeki...