Hypothermia

By Arnaldur Indridason

Harvill Secker, £11.99

In Iceland, cold cases are very cold indeed. Nordic detectives get ever gloomier, but for Erlendur, senior detective in Reykjavik, life is brightening. His diet of microwaved sheep's head has been replaced by tasty smoked lamb; his children are still drug addicts but his son is considering rehab and his daughter trying to cut down. However, a puzzling suicide in beautiful lakeside surroundings sends him deep into his own history, and the loss of his young brother in a blizzard.

Arnaldur Indridason's novel is about the relationship between past and present, and, in an especially Icelandic way, about the relationship between reality and the supernatural. The dead woman had an unhealthy curiosity about the afterlife, consulting mediums, wondering whether near-death experiences reported from the operating table proved that there was another existence.

She was obsessed not only by the loss of her mother, but the drowning of her father when she was a child. What really happened on that lake years ago? What lengths did she go to to discover the truth?

Erlendur has an admirable doggedness. He will never give up, rebuts the easy verdict of suicide, and continues to plunge into the past of the dead woman (and her husband), as well as the disappearances of two young people.

Indridason has a remarkable understanding of grief and its persistence. The answers to Erlendur's quests, however, do not lie in modern Reykjavik. There are superbly descriptive interludes of the magical Icelandic landscape, in which many secrets are hidden. In addition, Indridason combines psychological acuteness with great stylistic economy and a pleasing pace.