The tourism boom in Iceland has resulted in all sorts of shiny new hotels popping up in Reykjavik. It seems an unlikely source of inspiration at first, but just think of all the criminal capers that could go on in a hotel. The camera-shy Iceland-based author Erlendur Arason has taken that ball and run with it, coming up with the tantalisingly titled Hotel Manager’s Guide to Murder in the process.
Erlendur is an established crime author who is now branching out after a hiatus from writing. In this novel from new publisher Blekwerk, you’ll meet a pair of cops called Haukur and Dagný. But in all honesty, they don’t like each other much and aren’t the main focus of the story. The key character you’ll follow is Torfi, a hotel employee who has somehow ended up in charge but now finds himself helping dispose of a body…
Hence, he’ll cross paths with the two detached cops. Out of his depth, Torfi must deal with whatever fate throws it him. Can he find the mettle and the guile needed to extricate himself from a situation that gets worse and worse? We decided to ask Erlendur to join us here at Crime Fiction Lover and tell us more about his new novel – the first in a planned trilogy.
What are crime fiction lovers going to love about The Hotel Manager’s Guide to Murder?
I hope readers will appreciate that this is a crime story that’s primarily about the unfortunate people caught up in something that’s too deep for them, although there’s a police angle to it as well.
Discerning readers will love the shades of light and dark, pressure being applied to someone who doesn’t know how far he is from the end of his tether, the twists and turns that I hope will keep them guessing, and at least some of the bad guys getting what they deserve. Plus there’s the Reykjavík background to the story, and winter closing in and making life tough for everyone.
At first glance it sounds like a bit of a caper. Is it that or is it a darker sort of crime fiction?
It’s darker than a caper, although there are caper-ish elements to it. It takes a while for the central character to find out just how much trouble he’s in, so that aspect is a slow burn.
There’s a reference to a character in another author’s crime series – which isn’t translated into English – which I dropped in a few times but didn’t want to overuse and let become a running gag. That other crime writer hasn’t said anything, so far. Maybe he hasn’t noticed.
Icelanders have a wry, bone-dry humour that comes of adversity, and that’s what I’ve tried to place in the story.
Who is Torfi, what inspired the character and how have you developed him?
I’m not exactly sure who inspired him, other than having worked with people like him in the past. There’s a Torfi in every workplace, the reliable, conscientious mid-level droid who barely gets noticed and doesn’t get rapidly promoted. I gave him a convoluted back story that’s dropped in piece by piece, and a fairly fraught family life. I admit I gave him a rough ride, and wanted to see how far I could push him before he’d snap!
What’s he up against in The Hotel Manager’s Guide to Murder?
Torfi says the wrong thing during an appraisal. So instead of being laid off, he’s promoted, with a hefty pay rise, backdated, which he takes as a long-overdue stroke of good luck. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s got himself into, but tries not to think about it, until he’s told to cover up a murder – and that he’s in too deep to say no.
Torfi’s conflict is that he’s out of his depth, he doesn’t know what the others think he knows. Now that he’s in deep, he suspects he knows who the killer is – and then finds out that he doesn’t. So he’s up against something he can’t put his finger on, and he’s as much in the dark as the police when a murder comes to light and they start asking him difficult questions.
Where did the idea for the story come from?
A lot of business travel over the years, numerous business hotels (at the cheaper end of the scale) and a susprising amount of inside information about what goes on in hotels. Then there’s the incident that kicks off Torfi’s decline and fall, but I’m sworn to secrecy on the origin of that.
When I think about Iceland and accommodation, I always think of Hotel Borg in Reykjavik. It crops up in crime novels too and I think, ‘Cool, I’ve been there.’ Can you tell us about the hotel setting you’ve created and what it’s based on, whether or not Borg is in the mix?
Hótel Borg is older and classier than the Hótel Bristol. However, Torfi worked at Hótel Borg in his younger days and picked up many of his skills there.
Practically every city seems to have a hotel called Bristol. They’re everywhere. But not in Reykjavík, so I decided to remedy that. The Bristol was a smart new place in the 90s, so it has a polish and a patina to it that the brand-new hotels built for the current tourist boom don’t have, but it doesn’t have Borg’s reputation. Part of the fun was also putting it through the turmoil of new ownership, going from a family-run operation to becoming part of a business group with its ownership in some distant country.
Who are some of the other interesting characters we’ll meet?
There are the rough sleepers who come to the hotel early in the morning to scrounge a bite to eat from the breakfast chef, and two of them, Raggi and Láki, manage to witness something that’s not good for the health.
It was interesting to populate Hótel Bristol with a cast of staff and guests, from the kind-hearted breakfast chef to the hard-as-nails HR manager and the shadowy figure from the parent company’s head office overseas.
Then there are the two police officers, Haukur and Dagný, who neither like nor trust each other, but who have to work together.
What were the bigger or wider themes you wanted to explore in the novel and why?
I really wanted to explore the seat-of-the-pants nature of so many workplaces, such as Hótel Bristol, and how it’s the minimum-wage droids (overwhelmingly immigrants) who really keep everything going – despite what the self-satisfied managers upstairs believe. Then there’s the bleak existence of the guys who have dropped to the bottom rung of society and don’t have any further to fall.
And I wanted to explore Torfi’s bafflement when faced with his daughter metamorphosing from a sweet little girl into a vegan goth, and his frustrations in coping with his teenage stepsons who really don’t like him. Family tension always provides a great backdrop to a crime novel.
Which crime books and/or authors have inspired you most, and what are you reading right now?
In Iceland it’s Arnaldur and Yrsa, the ones who paved the way for the rest of us… I’ve been reading another Icelandic noir veteran, Stella Blómkvist, and wondering if there are going to be any more, or has Stella hung up her briefcase?
Sjöwall & Wahlöö are naturally the godparents of all us Nordic crimewriters. Outside the Nordic stuff, big favourites are Georges Simenon, Barbara Nadel and Donald Westlake, especially the Parker novels. Right now I’ve been reading spooky and speculative fiction by Hildur Knútsdóttir and Emil Hjörvar Pedersen, plus a bleak-as-hell novella called Harðindi (Hardship) by a newcomer called Vilhjálmur Pétursson. That’s someone to watch out for.
What’s next for Erlendur Arason and what’s next for Torfi?
I hope Torfi’s nerves have recovered by now, after the ordeal he’s been through, and that he and his wife have managed to forgive each other for everything.
There are two more novels in the series. What binds the trilogy together is the two cops, Dagný and Haukur, even though the stories focus more on the criminals and victims than on the work of the police. So they are back in Chop Job, planned for February next year. Dagný has a case so cold to deal with that it’s practically permafrozen. Haukur’s working on a car theft ring, just as a smart car thief puts a foot badly wrong and steals the pride and joy of a crooked businessman who isn’t the forgiving type. The two cases turn out to have a link.
The third in the trilogy is written, but the title has yet to be decided. Dagný finds herself uncomfortably close to a drugs case and a turf war that involves her family, and she and Haukur have to settle their differences and help each other out.
The Hotel Manager’s Guide to Murder goes on sale in English on 25 July 2026. Secure your copy with the Amazon buttons below.
