A split time book with a murder investigation set in 2017. The seeds for the murder start in 1989, and as the past races towards the current the devastating life of a young girl reveals reasons for the murder, but the end still came as a surprise
I love books set in Iceland, a whole country that can give a story a small town, cosy-crime, feel.
Detective Elma returns to her home town after serving as an officer in Reykjavik. It should be a move to a quiet tranquil area but her first job is to investigate the murder of a woman found on the rocks below the lighthouse
As with all small towns everybody seems to know everybody, but nobody seems to know what goes on behind closed doors.
The victim is a woman that works for an airline and should be on a flight to Canada, or that’s what her husband thought. So why has she been found on the rocks, outside a town she swore she’d never return to, a town she hates.
As the investigation gets underway a second story is told from a young girls point of view, a story of innocence stolen, a story of the building of a monster, but why did nobody intervene.
This is not a complex book. It two main characters, Elma the returning detective, and Elisabet, the little girl growing up in 1989, the body on the rocks.
The mystery lies in the past, the way Elisabet transforms through her childhood, the sufferings that turn her into what she becomes.
Can Elma connect the dots. It’s not easy as much of the information she needs is from Elisabet childhood, from teachers and other school children.
By knitting together peoples half memories, false memories, and imposed memories she may be able to get to the bottom of the current day murder.
Pages: 315. Publisher: Orenda Books Available now
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