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NIGHTBLIND is set about five years after SNOWBLIND, the first in the Thór Arason series. Ari Thór, as he is called, was disappointed not to have been made inspector as he'd hoped following the successful conclusion of his first case in Siglufjörður. Instead Herjólfur, a man with perhaps better connections, was chosen. But Ari Thór has married and is now the father of a little son who is the joy of his life, so he is largely content.
Siglufjörður might remind Canadian readers of a Newfoundland outport. Once a bustling fishing port, it has been in steady decline since the herring disappeared some fifty years ago. Change is underway, or at least a bit of it - the place is now accessible by car year round, thanks to tunnels that connect it to the rest of Iceland and avoid some very terrifying roads. But fewer than two thousand people still live there and they are intimately connected if only because they share the common challenges of living in an extreme climate, one where the sun disappears from the end of November till the end of January, reassuring inhabitants only by the occasional flash of light off a distant peak.
So who, in a town where firearms are commonplace and murder virtually unknown, a town that thinks of itself as the safest place in the safest country in the world, might have blown away Herjólfur with a blast from a shotgun? And why?
If Ari Thór hoped that with Herjólfur out of commission, he might now finally be allowed to head up an investigation, he is to be sadly disappointed. Instead, Tómas, the former inspector whom Herjólfur had replaced, is brought back to manage the case. Ari Thór likes Tómas and had been sorry to see him leave, but still, it does seem that his own career has stalled. His mood is not improved by his suspicion that his marriage is faltering, though he is a bit too emotionally thick to do much about it.
Like SNOWBLIND, this novel is an effective melding of classic village mystery with contemporary Nordic noir. The successful solution depends upon an intimate understanding of relationships and character; the noir factor arises out of what is revealed about these relationships and how they explain murders that occur. It concludes with a genuinely shocking revelation that might or might not surprise the astute reader. And all this is narrated in Ragnar Jønasson's spare, evocative prose, effectively translated by Quentin Bates.
NIGHTBLIND is presented as the second novel in the Dark Iceland series, but it is, as far as I can make out, the fifth, with two more following. It is the second one, however, to appear in the US in English, though the intervening entries have been published in the UK. American readers will hope that these will find their way across the ocean very soon indeed.
And do not skip the Author's Note at the end, in which Ragnar pays tribute to the inspiration of his grandfather, author Þ. Ragnar Jönasson, and provides a passage from one of his stories, a poetic celebration of the seasons in the far northern town of Siglufjörður.
§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal. She's been editing RTE since 2008.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, December 2017
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