Arctic Chill: An Inspector Erlendur Novel (An Inspector Erlendur Series, 5)

This is a good book that is terribly marred by the horrible translation and the typographical errors. Many of the idioms are incorrect or none that I've heard of and the translation is awkward and appears to be obsolete. Please find a new translator for Indridason's Erlandur series!This novel does not come up to Jar City, The Draining Lake, or Voices. Its premise is interesting - the stabbing murder of Elias, a young half-Thai boy that might have been racially motivated. As Detective Erlandur of the Reykjavik Police investigates this heinous act, he talks to Elias's schoolmates, teachers, neighbors and family. There is plenty of racism and the case is complicated by other extraneous matters. Included in the list of possible culprits is a pedophile who tries to lead Erlandur on a different trail, one that follows his own step-father who he calls a monster.Erlandur is still reading his missing persons books, stories of people who disappeared into the Icelandic wilderness. Never having overcome the death of his brother, Erlandur soothes himself by reading tales of the disappeared, some of whom have come to a better end than his brother who disappeared without leaving any trace.Erlandur is also dealing with the impending death of Marion Briem, his mentor and first supervisor when he entered the police force. As in previous novels of this series, Marion is sharp as a tack even on her deathbed and the reader never finds out Marion's gender.This novel gives the reader great insight into the new Icelandic society as it deals with issues of multiculturalism and xenophobia, wanting to keep Iceland's heritage as it was and lily white.I think that the novel could possibly have been shining had it had a better translation.

This is Arnaldur Indridason’s 5th book in his Inspector Erlandur series and I am slowly reading the books in order. Set in Iceland these police procedurals follow the crime solving of Erlandur’s team of investigators. The book increasingly are told against the estranged relationship Erlandur has with his drug addicted daughter and disconnected son who both here want to know more about their Father’s past… especially the death of Erlandur’s brother which still haunts Erlandur. The death has fueled Erlandur’s obsession with finding missing persons. The major case here (there are a couple of sub-plots) is a rather basic who done it that attempts to shed light on how immigrants from Thailand clash with the mostly intolerant conservative homogametic Icelandic culture. A 10 year old boy is found dead in the street in the middle of winter with his blood already freezing his body to the ground. The boy is the half-Thai son of a woman who was brought from Thailand to Iceland by an Icelandic man she married. She later brought her 15 year old son from Thailand to live with them. This second son did not adjusting well to the new language or culture. He runs away after finding out his younger brother was killed. A teacher at the boys school tormented immigrant children. At the time of the murder the boy’s mother is divorced (as part of a pattern her husband had previously brought another Thai woman and divorced her). Erlandur and his team investigate starting with the theory that the murder had racial anti-immigrant overtones. (Substitute the United States for Iceland and Muslim for Thailand and the emotions and situation would ring true today.) A lot happens during the course of the investigation and it feels real as everyone who could be involved is interviewed and eventually the murder weapon found. The book has a good pace and Indridason’s story and writing is rather bleak like his grey winter weather setting. The police work is depicted with a greater reality than just having a famous detective discover who done it. Erlandur is still toying with a new relationship and finding no joy in his feelings of guilt and unworthiness. Oh yes, his best friend also dies of cancer. He finally develops the major clue that solves the case as a result of his making a major error. I have enjoyed all of Indrdason’s books I have read so far, but these last two less so than the early ones. This one is not awful and was entertaining but it hung a bit too much to the immigration issue which stereotyped some of the characters. The book is all very bleak as the title suggests. Maybe the next book will take place in the summer.

Erlendur, currently my favorite cop (and until the next possible outing of Arkady Renko for the time being the only one that interests me), searches, again, for the purpose of this whole business of life and death. As usual he can find no answers. Life is a random mass of unforeseeable coincidences that govern man's fate.In this 5th volume of the series, the main case is the murder of a 10 y old boy of partly Thai origin. He got stabbed on a winter afternoon on the way home from school. We follow police work in a maze of assumptions: racism? Kids gangs? Drugs related? A pedophile in the neighborhood?In parallel, Erlendur has another missing person case, which does not take as much time as the dead boy, but distracts him to the extent of interference. (Can a relationship flourish that started by both partners cheating former spouses? No conclusive evidence that none can ever, but this one can't.)We learn something about the specific Icelandic situation with immigration. The school of the story has just 30 foreign kids. That's negligible in comparison to many other European countries. The related problems seem small scale as well. The immigration level is given as 10%, which is also relatively low, and hence the reaction to it, the racist and nationalist noise, is also rather low. All this will give readers from the UK or France or Germany a feeling of `no big deal'. The real integration issue in most of Europe, religion, is not even mentioned.All this gives the book a touch of being behind its time on big issues.The police work here is also not on its most exciting level. One might find it a bit slow and undirected. As much as I like Erlendur (and I definitely recommend volume 6 strongly), this volume 5 is among the weaker ones so far. (And there is no bonus for proper political thinking in literature.) This would not be a good one to start the series with.

It is Erlandur's turn to grieve in this story. Based around the murder of a young immigrant boy this story probes Iceland's soft racist underbelly. The main characters still have their own back stories and Eva Line drifts in and out. The question about Erlandur's brother is still like Banquo's ghost, haunting Erlandur's at every turn.I wasn't as engrossed by this story as by others in the series, it seemed a little slow. The missing paedophile was intriguing,I couldn't see the point in bringing him into the story, he may pop up in later books. I mistakenly linked him with Bergur's disappearance which I think was my motivation for persevering to the end of the story. Hopefully I'll find the next one draws me in more.

I kept at it but it didn’t grip me like JarCity or Voices. It took an immense amount of time to get anywhere and seemed to overly obsess about ‘coloured’ immigrants when it meant Asian immigrants.I think a lot was lost in translation... and what does ‘tilting against windmills’ mean? Also what does it mean when they refer to the child as being a bit of a ‘flight attendant’. Bizarre. However, it was allI’m all a good novel, just got an easy out at the end like he’d had enough of it so wrapped it up quick.

I am working my way through this excellent series and this is the first book that has felt a ittle laboured. Probably because the subject matter was not as gripping as the others. And the author was a little too occupied with preaching the difficulties that immigrants face in Iceland. So it was tedious in parts. Indridason has some tremendous back stories running through hsi books especially the one involving his estranged daughter. But she hardly features in this book and that's a pity. But I feel he's setting the scene for her to play a larger role in the forthcoming books. It's a seris to stick with as the writing is excellent.

The Reykjavik murders are addictive, evoking the Icelandic culture, climate and scenery excellently, particularly for those, like me, who were unaware of how a succession of occupying nationalities during and after WW2 changed the society so fundamentally.

I always love this series, it gives me a real ‘Icelandic feel’, which I cherish, having visited, all too briefly. However, with this book in particular, I would have to say that, having lived in Thailand as a foreigner, the experience of racism is more than reciprocated. Likewise the danger of being a foreigner in Thailand. Hard to show that in a book of this nature, but at the end of the day, a foreigner in Iceland will see more justice and understanding than one in much of south east Asia