If you want a great read to cool off from our unseasonably warm weather along along with a strong plot and interesting characters to warm you back up again, then pick up a book by Iceland's leading author of crime, Arnaldur Indri∂ason. During one summer week in 2003 five of his novels dominated the Icelandic bestseller list. It has taken a few years since then for Indri∂ason's books to dribble out in English translations for our immense enjoyment. (For ease of reading I will hereafter use "d' instead of "∂" when mentioning the author's name.)

His inaugural novel, "Tainted Blood," originally published in the UK as "Jar City," came out in 2004. "Jar City" was later made into a movie which was the Icelandic submission for the Best Foreign Language film for 2007. "Silence of the Grave" is his second novel. It came out a year later in 2005 and was awarded the Gold Dagger Award for Best Novel that same year. Indridason has gone on to achieve a world wide following, quite an accomplishment for an author not yet 40.  

Like other Scandinavian authors affected by long winters and dark, sunless skies, Indridason's main character, Erlendur, is a closed-in, moody soul who manages to be an extraordinarily sympathetic human being in spite of his flaws due to the fact that the author fleshes him out into a real, complex human personality. He has been scarred for life by the loss of his brother after the two became lost in a blinding snowstorm. Both were under 10 years of age at the time, and the nightmare memory of his losing his grip on his beloved brother, never to see him again, will haunt him forever. 

Because Erlendur is always searching for what he has lost in his own life, he makes for a wonderful investigator, if not a complete human being. His childhood trauma later led to the breakup of his marriage and the estrangement of his two children, one of whom is now a drug addict. 

To state these bare facts is not to present a very pretty picture, but this is only where Erlendur's character starts, not where he is going. Lest you get the impression that reading these books is a "downer," may I hasten to dissuade you of that notion. There is something hopeful about Erlendur, and, in fact, throughout the course of Indridason's novels he gradually comes out of his self-imposed shell and grows towards the light of becoming a complete person. We are rooting for him all of the way, for he really is very likable and appealing. 

A slowly developing archeological dig is the brilliant premise of this novel as it serves the additional purpose of allowing two completely separate but thematically related and carefully constructed plots to proceed along parallel tracks without either rushing ahead of the other. A skeleton has been discovered at the site of a new real estate subdivision. Since it was buried, it is presumed to have been the result of a crime. However, it also appears to have been buried for a long time, so an archeologist has been called in from the National Museum to head the painstaking excavation so that not a clue is lost. Each level of dirt has to be slowly excavated and sifted for clues which allows the novel's two other parallel stories to develop on their own. 

The overriding theme of this novel is abuse. One story takes place many years ago and is about a young girl from the countryside who rashly agrees to marry a man she doesn't know very well. He turns out to be a serial abuser who beats her mercilessly. She already had a daughter, Mikkelina, who was her child out of wedlock with a sailor who had died at sea before they were able to marry. This and the fact that Mikkelina was born a cripple were his initial "excuses" for beating her, not that he ever needed a reason. There was always something wrong with her. Two years into their marriage the young wife has another child, a boy, Simon. She is a deeply devoted mother who will do anything to protect them, especially Mikkelina who doesn't speak and has to be carried everywhere.

The second story concerns Erlendur and his relationship, if you can call it that, with his daughter, Eva Lind. Erlendur has been divorced for 20 years after walking out on Halldóra, his wife at the time. After an uncontested divorce in which she won full custody of their two children, Sindri Snaer and Eva Lind, she refused to allow him to have any further contact with them. Halldóra still hates him, and both children have grown up with intense feelings of abandonment. Sindri has turned out all right, but Erlendur as a policeman has had occasion to run into Eva due to her having become a drug addict.

Erlendur initially abused his family by suddenly walking out and leaving them bereft of his company just as he was suddenly left bereft of his brother's company. Now his daughter, Eva Lind, deals with the loss of a father figure by doing drugs, but at some point she will have to take responsibility for everything that her sordid lifestyle entails. 

Not now, though, as Eva calls Erlendur's cell phone with a cry for help, and he instinctively knows that she has overdosed on drugs somewhere. Where, he doesn't know, so he begins a mad dash through the drug dens, seedy bars, and the dives of Reykjavik before he discovers her near lifeless body. Every night thereafter he spends a troubled vigil at her hospital bedside while she lies in a comatose state. There he ponders the loss of his brother, now the possible loss of his daughter, and the curious investigation of the murder scene slowly being excavated. 

Erlendur wants to see justice done while the police brass question the time spent as being pointless since the perpetrator has to be long dead by now. One thought that keeps coming back to him is why there are Redcurrant bushes, a plant not native to Iceland, growing near where the skeleton was discovered in an isolated area that was far from the city. Translated from Icelandic by Bernard Scudder, McMillan-Picador Publishers, 2005, 224 pages.