Book Review: Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indridason

Photo: Cover, from the book's Wikipedia page

Another of the Nordic Noir (this one takes place in Iceland) to become very popular in the last ten years or so, following in the wake of authors like Jo Nesbo, Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and many more.  Not reaping the rewards of this new trend, by the way, are the translators of such novels.  They deserve just as much credit, if not more, than the actual authors.  Or do people think that Stieg Larsson wrote in English?  The style of the English, which has gained such notoriety from these Nordic Noirists, is more the translator than the author.  I'm just sayin'.  The translator for this one is Bernard Scudder.

Anyway, this one is very effective, and not much of a mystery, actually.  A skeletal hand is found (Killer opening sentence: He knew at once it was a human bone, when he took it from the baby who was sitting on the floor chewing it.) and the detectives in charge let an archaeologist unearth the whole skeleton, a long, painstaking process that allows the author to delve into the abusive past of the family who lived nearby the grave, as well as the self-destructive daughter of one of the detectives, and his own relationship problems.  The story unfolds in layers of shifting third-person omniscient narration, and the reader soon finds that the actual mystery is the identity of the skeleton--and of the one found with it later in the book.  There's a further subplot involving the broken relationship of the owner of the place that had once stood on the spot of the grave, and of his fiancee, who left him after she became pregnant with someone else's baby.  That's a running theme of the book: broken relationships, both between a man and a woman and between adults and their children.  In that sense, the book is especially Nordic--the noir comes not just from the writing style, but also from the insinuated hopelessness about relationships.  Nobody's got a good one here, but it ends with a brief but hopeful touch, though that depends on your point of view, I guess.  Less Nordic Noir than Henning Mankell's excessively cold and distant landscapes, and Stieg Larsson's detached characters and their often-xenophobic attitudes, but still noir nonetheless.  Think Raymond Chandler, but without the ditzy dames.

If you like this kind of stuff, as I do, you'll like this one.  I started and finished it in six hours, because I was unable to sleep.  So it's a quick read, and the shifting third-person omniscient narration never confuses.  I guessed the identity of the skeleton pretty quickly, and I think any astute reader would, too.  I get the feeling that the author (and translator) sort of knew this, but the reading enjoyment isn't because of the final answer, but because of the journey it takes to get there.  You let it unfold at its own pace, which is neither too slow nor too fast, and when it gets there, you're satisfied, even though you probably knew it the whole time.

Worthwhile as we enter the Noir winter in these parts.  I wonder if I can start a series of novels that will give rise to other writers doing the same sort of thing, and it'll all be called New England Noir?

Quick Jots--Syria, and This Crazy, Dangerous World

More thoughts that don't have the steam (or maybe I just don't) to be their own blog entries.

--Completed 200 pages of my novel manuscript, and we're rolling right along.

--Sox's text polls are actually advertisements for AT&T and for whatever options are available.  For example, today's poll is for the fans to vote for their favorite non-Sox event at Fenway Park.  Options are Picnic in the Park (happening soon), Frozen Fenway (advertised heavily throughout this game), concerts (several coming up) and...well, you get the idea.  Each text is $.99 for AT&T, of course.  So the sponsor makes out, and the Sox ownership, which also owns Fenway, makes out.  A win-win.  And they show which option leads by using percent scores, so an option that has 10% could have 100 of 1000 total votes--or 1 of 10 total votes.

--I'm looking forward to seeing Boardwalk Empire and The Following.  What shows are you looking forward to?

--Just in the past two weeks, a 1 1/2 year old baby in a stroller, and a 1-year old baby in her babysitter's arms, have been shot dead, the latter yesterday in New Orleans.  What the hell is going on?  Defense exhibit 256,348 about why I mostly keep to myself and stay in my own cave.  It's a crazy, dangerous world out there.

--And, oh yeah, an 88-year old World War II vet was beaten to death by two teenagers, one of whom said the old man was trying to cheat him on a crack deal.  Camera footage clearly shows the youths beating the snot out of the old man, and does not show anything at all that would indicate a drug deal.

--Reading a good book slows down this very crazy world.  Or, it seems that way to me.

--I've got a bet with a friend that Jerry Remy will return this year to NESN to broadcast games for the Sox.  My friend says he'll never return, not even next year.  I think, and hope, that he's wrong.

--The nighttime darkness falls like a heavy curtain now, at least in my neck of the woods.

--The latest iPhone commercial is yet another example of how most commercials are better without a set, typical script.  Music and images that highlight the use of the product make great commercials.

--I don't know if striking Syria is what we wanna do.  I say this while knowing admittedly nothing at all of the situation over there.  But the latest I heard, the Syrian attack on its own civilians--while despicable, of course--have not been a danger to this country, and / or our allies.  I suspect there's something that went on, or that has been threatened, that we don't know about, but we're spreading ourselves sort of thin already.  Does Syria have WPDs, or has it threatened terrorist attacks here?  If I'm severely out of line, or misinformed, please (nicely) let me know.

--I told someone today that horror movies don't scare me.  The daily news, however, horrifies daily.

--Nice to know someone else famous felt the same way.  From Robert Frost's "Desert Places" (and, whoa!  As I type this, a car commercial's narrator says the phrase "the road less traveled."  Scary symmetry, man...):

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars–on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

(Me, again.)  Is it me, or is Frost saying that the human race is the scariest thing in the universe?

Guilt by Jonathan Kellerman

Photo: from kirkusreviews.com
 
Guilt is Kellerman's best book in quite some time.  I'd long given up on the author and on the series; things had just gotten too graphic, too gross, too judgmental.  In short, Kellerman had gotten lazy, and his prose spoke of too much self-opinion and attitude and not enough mystery and characterization--you know, the reasons you read series like this to begin with.

Finally, he returns here with a book that is more mystery than attitude, more puzzle and who-dun-it than gross-outs and psychos who come out of left field to be the bad guy.  The end result is a winning work that hopefully will remind Kellerman of what he used to write.  Here's to hoping that he produces more like this.

It starts off with a baby's skeleton found deep in the now-exposed roots of a tree in a rich woman's front yard.  Then another baby's skeleton is found.  Then a young woman's--these last two in the same park.  Then more turn up, but by then you know that they're amongst the villains, and the reader will know who did it about 75% to 80% of the way through.  The rest is explanation, proof, and arrest.

But that doesn't spoil the read, which is a good thing, because once again Kellerman uses real-life L.A. types for his work, without bothering too much to hide the real identities for his characters; this is a habit that had grown thin with me, and still does.  But here it works, sort of.  But it's still lazy writing, as the real-life people are the characters and characterizations that he's supposed to work hard to show us on his own.  Instead, there's an obvious Brangelina here, using the real-life couple and their fame, eccentricity and adoptions to substitute for the work that Kellerman should be doing with his writing to supply us with the characters.  By the time it ends, the similarity to the real-life couple has long since entered fiction and separated from the real-life people, but that doesn't disguise the fact that he used them to get us there.

Whatever.  I read the book in two days, so it's an easy and interesting read.  It's free of Kellerman's usual judgments, and, thankfully, the sparring and relationship troubles of Delaware and Robin are long gone--and about time, since they're not the reason we read this stuff, anyway.  Their troubles were like Robert B. Parker's former use of chapters and chapters of describing Spenser's cooking prowess--unnecessary and a disturbing deviation from the plot and storyline.  Give us characters, not forced character traits or character drama.  In other words, story over anything else, always.

That rule was followed here, to everyone's benefit.  Now, when I buy the next one in the series, I won't feel bad as I do so, and I won't have to tell myself that I'm buying it only because I have all the others.

For my reviews of other Jonathan Kellerman books, many Stephen King books, and dozens of others, click on this link to my Goodreads book page.