Ragnar Jónasson

FEATURED IN THE TIMES TOP 100 CRIME NOVELS SINCE 1945 SOON TO BE A MAJOR TV SERIES 'An intelligent, provocative whodunit with a killer twist' IAN RANKIN ____________ A body is found off the coast of Iceland. A cursory police investigation calls it suicide. She's just another statistic, soon forgotten. But not by Reykjavik Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir. Difficult and unconventional, Hulda is being forced into early retirement. Offered one last cold case to investigate she chooses Elena's. And when she discovers another woman vanished at a similar time, she believes a killer roams free. With days before she's stripped of her badge, can Hulda catch the killer alone? ____________ THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR 'Superb . . . chilling . . . one of the greatest tragic heroines of contemporary detective fiction' Sunday Times 'Outstanding' Daily Mail 'Expertly plotted, with an ending that's a true shocker' Guardian 'Brilliantly effective. Each book enraptures us' The Times Literary Supplement 'Magnificently dark and twisted and that ending - blimey!' C. J. Tudor, bestselling author of The Chalk Man

If you like Saga Noren from The Bridge, then you'll love Hulda Hermannsdottir

The Darkness

Janice Hopper

Well, THAT didn't go where I thought it might go!!! Holy carp.

I do like these Nordic noir sorts of books. The protagonist of this story is a 64 year old woman facing retirement, and not being happy about it. (She's basically pushed out a little early so a younger man could take her place.) She has one last case she can work on, if she can get it done. And if her past history doesn't catch up with her.

The story pops back and forth in time and, at least with the audiobook, it was a little while before I understood exactly what was going on. There are a couple of different stories happening in the background, and the author pretty deliberately obscures what's happening until the very end.

And that ending... jeezopete.

Noir, indeed. 

Read for the mystery book club, Audible version. Narrator was fine. A solid 3.5 stars. I listened to most of it while doing a final clear-out of my sister's house before it's sold.

Fraser Simons

Hulda is an interesting detective in this Scandinavian noir staple. She’s older, doesn’t have a partner, and is being more-or-less forced out, by way of mandatory retirement. As a means of appeasing her, she’s allowed to take on whatever case she wants from the cold cases. When she picks one that seems lazily investigated and subsequently closed, she begins to tug on a thread connected to a lot more than she bargained for.

While it is quite short, the pacing was sometimes a bit rough. There’s a B plot with a would-be partner that provides a nice counterpoint to her investigation and organically unearths her past, but it also feels a bit like spinning wheels, overall. The case also inserts itself in the narrative in the form of small chapters that is from the victims perspective, which mostly worked for me. 

There’s quite a bit to like. Unconventional protagonist and setup, a decent twist, decent themes. I think it unintentionally undermines some of the granular things it introduces with the twist, good as it is, though. Still would, absolutely, recommend it to people looking for a something in the genre.

Jemima Scott

shellybn

** spoiler alert **
           I wish I had read this book before I bought the other two. I do not like it when the author spends the entire book working to make readers like the characters, and then in the last few chapters shows them to be bad people. I cannot root for this detective knowing she is a horrible person, and knowing what I know now, I can't believe her characterizations of other people. I also really dislike when evil doers go unpunished. Readers discover who the murderer in the main mystery is, but as of the end of this book, he is still free, and one even realizes or cares murder has been committed.

The Darkness If you like Saga Noren from The Bridge, then you'll love Hulda Hermannsdottir

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