Voices

This is the third book in a detective series set in Iceland. Given that Iceland has a population of just over 300,000 and houses the largest desert in the world, you wouldn't have thought there would be many murders and many places to carry them out!

As the series develops I expected more to be made of the Icelandic culture or geography. I suppose in small countries even Swedish writer Henning Mankell whose Kurt Wallendar novels are set in Sweden felt the need for two of the series to have action partly outside of Sweden, despite the much larger population.

Despite adding little to my understanding of Icelandic culture 'Voices' is a good detective read. The story has enough twists and turns to keep me interested and gives a good sense of the gloom that surrounds the Detective, his past troubles as a child and present problems with his daughter.

The character of the detective develops as in the earlier books in this series and I felt the impending coming of Christmas was a great device to hurry the story along.
Driven on by his own issues and his desire to solve the crime, he doggedly follows clues and eventually finds the killer, and probably had a good Christmas too!

Good storytelling with a translation that only occasionally reminder me that it was a translation.

As the assistant in the Birkenhead branch of Waterstone's said when I was looking for a new author to try 'If you enjoyed Henning Mankell, you'll enjoy Arnaldur Indridason. I did.

Ooh, I like Henning Mankell so this will go on my list...