Translated by Quentin Bates — It’s not for her loveable nature that Stella Blómkvist is the most popular and successful defence lawyer in Iceland, she is a winner, pure and simple, tenacious and formidable. A little and sometimes a lot scary, Stella is exactly who you want in your corner if you’re up against it, ever ready to take a whack at authority, corruption, abuse of power and patriarchy. Her voracious appetite for Jack Daniels and sex, on the other hand, may not benefit her clients’ cases but those traits spice the plot nicely in this unusual Nordic series.
The author is still incognito, a long kept secret, unlike her namesake protagonist who is as busy as ever and has celebrity status. It’s 2011, three years after the financial crisis that still blights the Icelandic economy. In the office one morning, Stella, complete with hangover and a bad mood, faces her first appointment of the day. It will only darken her mood. Dyrleif is a medium with a message. She wants Stella to help her prevent the death of an unidentified man. Something she has foreseen in a vision involving Stella’s mother from beyond the grave. Stella hates time wasters but perhaps there really is something going on.
The next appointment is a young girl. Her mother has died and she left documents with Stella that will finally tell Úlfhildur, 17, who her father is. Konrád is a priest who lives in Keflavik and is not happy when his unacknowledged daughter wants to meet him. He worries how his parishioners will react to the news and whether she’s just after money. When he spurns Úlfhildur it makes Stella angry, and that’s not smart.
Then the police ring – a body has turned up. Former MP Grimúlfur Haldórsson was tied up in the water at the Grótta lighthouse and left to die by the rising tide. It soon emerges that the businessman has plenty of enemies, local people with grudges to bear and revenge in mind. Some of them were exploited by Haldórsson in the wake of the crash.
Among them Vilmundur, a fisherman and a client of Stella’s. He interests the police because his boat was near the scene of the crime at the crucial time but they don’t have any real evidence at all. Dyrleif, the psychic, naturally claims to have warned everyone and been ignored.
As if that wasn’t enough, alleged drug dealer ‘Psycho’ Sævar, an old sparring partner, wants Stella to represent him. He thinks he has a way to get off the latest charges against him if Stella can broker a deal. If the plan fails things might get serious, if not fatal. Success means danger for Stella, as it could put one of the city’s top gangsters in the spotlight.
It’s a delight to spend time with Stella, a wrecking ball of a character; unforgettable, sexy, sassy, fearless and smart as a whip. Vulnerable clients, and even the sexist ones, obstructive authorities and damning evidence only cause Stella to raise her game. The cases play out in a fast-paced, multi-track mystery with a couple of neat twists.
The dry wit and crackling dialogue are a treat. These books are bestsellers in Iceland. This is a country of crime fiction but most of it is serious. What makes Murder Tide stand out is its dark humour. Beware this is not light comedy, it’s barbed and takes aim at societies ills.
See our interview with the anonymous mystery author here.
Corylus Books
Print/Kindle
£3.59
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
