Shedding Tears over an Icy Grave
“Life was a random mass of unforeseeable coincidences that governed men’s fates like a storm that strikes without warning, causing injury and death.” That one rather stark statement sums up the message at the very heart of Arnaldur Indriđason’s Arctic Chill , but it applies to each of the other books in his continuing “Reykjavik Thriller” series, as well, for there is always the underlying awareness in his writing that truly awful things happen around us and to us... but we’re powerless to do more than attempt to pick up the pieces and forge ahead. (Fortunately, that’s precisely what most of us typically do.) The primary case in question in Arctic Chill is particularly tragic; the body of a young boy has been found outside on a bitterly-cold January evening, frozen to the ground. A closer inspection reveals that he was stabbed and subsequently bled out on the spot, dying in a little garden area behind a block of flats before anyone who might have been able to help could stumble...