Mondays in Iceland - #114

The Girl Who Died

A Novel
By Ragnar Jónasson
Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
Minotaur Books, 2021

Reading Ragnar’s Icelandic crime novels has been a bit of a roller-coaster for me. They are all competent, if sometimes less than inspired. This book, the latest title to be translated from this prolific author, is more on the uninspired end of the spectrum. Ragnar’s prose has always been a bit terse, never more so than here. This is the story of Una, a 30-year-old Icelandic woman who answers an ad for a teacher in remote Skálar, a fishing village as far away from Rekjavík as you can get. The 10 inhabitants who live there are polite but distant to the newcomer. Una gets lodging with Salka and her eight-year-old daughter Edda, who is one of the two students in Una’s care.

A parallel story in the book concerns the presumed murder and disappearance of two young men, allegedly by two punks and a girlfriend of one of the missing men. That narrative was loosely based on a real-life Icelandic miscarriage of justice. The two stories become intertwined with the addition of a town secret and an apparition that plagues Una. As the book reaches its climax Ragnar veers into Shirley Jackson territory, forgoing his usual Agatha Christie ending.

Is The Girl Who Died worth reading? If you want something not too challenging, perhaps something to read on the couch with a glass of wine as you get over your second Covid vaccine shot, this might fill the bill. If you want a true thriller with a lot of action and vivid characters, stay away.