Review: THE WAKE, Yrsa Sigurdardottir

• 
  This edition read as an e-book on my Kindle (Amazon)
  
• Translated from Icelandic to English by Victoria Cribb
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0DKBLKQLK
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hodder & Stoughton, Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 9, 2025
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 410 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1399722902
• Part of series ‏ : ‎ The Black Ice  

Synopsis (Amazon)

Five friends. One devastating reunion. The new thriller from the legendary Icelandic bestseller (The Black Ice)

AMONG THE MOURNERS AT A FUNERAL, ONE OF IS THEM IS A KILLER...

A group of young professionals travel to the Westman Islands off the coast of Iceland to attend an old friend's wake. Their reunion soon turns into a living nightmare, as the memories of a party they attended at university, and desperately tried to forget, come rushing back.

When two bodies are found on a rocky beach close to the refurbished lighthouse keeper's house that the group had stayed in, medical examiner Iðunn is sent to provide the local police assistance.

For Iðunn, who grew up on the island, this takes her back to the heart of her complex family and the ghosts of her own past she would prefer to keep at bay.

But as the deadly secrets soon become insurmountable, can any of them escape unscathed?

My Take

What a tangled web! The author makes the read work overtime to get the sequence of events sorted out.

The events take place in the last week of January but there is a very convoluted time frame, and at least two settings. Nor are the chapters in order. It reminded me at the beginning of a choose your own adventure book, but once where the author had taken the finished chapters and shuffled them into a semi-random order. Not quite - but you get my drift.

Idunn is Iceland's only pathologist and she is sent off to the Westmann Islands to work out what has happened, and how there are so many dead bodies. 

Four days earlier a group of friends arrived by ferry from Reykjavic to attend the funeral of a friend whom they haven't seen since they were students at university in the capital 7 years before. They are not clear about how she has died and they are all avoiding thinking too much about when they last saw her.

In 4 days time 4 of them will be dead, and the investigation will begin.

An incredibly complex story, so many strands. It really puts this author on another plane in crime fiction.

This is #2 in the Black Ice series, and we meet up with part of the investigation team who featured in the previous novel CAN'T RUN, CAN'T HIDE

My rating: 4.8

I've also read

• 4.8, SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME
• 5.0, THE SILENCE OF THE SEA 
• 4.8, WHY DID YOU LIE? 
• 4.9, THE PREY 
• 4.5, THE DAY IS DARK 
• 4.8, CAN'T RUN, CAN'T HIDE - #1 from the Black Ice series 

Crime Fiction Alphabet - I is for Icelandic crime fiction

I originally thought I'd write this post just about Arnaldur Indriðason but then I thought I'd include Yrsa Sigurðardóttir whose books I have yet to tackle despite all the best intentions.

In the case of both authors English translations are slow to happen but fortunately they seem to have happened in order except for Arnaldur's OPERATION NAPOLEON written in 1999, but only recently translated.

Arnaldur is best known for his Erlendur series and there appear to be 11 in the series now:

• Synir duftsins (Sons of Dust, 1997)
• Dauðarósir (Silent Kill, 1998)
• Mýrin (Tainted Blood, also known as Jar City, 2000)
• Grafarþögn (Silence of the Grave, 2001)
• Röddin (Voices, 2003)
• Kleifarvatn (The Draining Lake, 2004)
• Vetrarborgin (Arctic Chill, 2005)
• Harðskafi (Hypothermia, 2007)
• Myrká (2008)
• Svörtuloft (2009)
• Furðustrandir (2010)

As you can see there are still 3 to be translated into English.

My mini-reviews

TAINTED BLOOD (JAR CITY), rating 4.9
A man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat, a cryptic note left on his body. Erlendur, Detective Inspector with the Reykjavik police investigates. The investigation of the dead man's past reveals 40 year old accusations of rape and the murder begins to reach out like an octopus into Iceland's past and its present. We learn much about Icelandic society, and about how police investigations are carried out. There are some interesting side plots such as Erlendur's relationship with his drug-addicted daughter Eva Lind, his son Sindri Snaer, and his retired colleague Marion Briem. The investigation moves at a good pace and raises some interesting ethical questions.

SILENCE OF THE GRAVE, rating 5.0
Building work on the outskirts of Reykajavik (Iceland) uncovers a body possibly buried alive during World War Two. Erlendur and his team are called in to investigate and try to uncover the truth while a team of archaeologists slowly and painstaking exhume the skeleton. Those who still live in the area tell of a young pregnant woman who disappeared in the war, but is it her? An elderly dying man talks of the green woman who was crooked. At the same time Erlendur is re-living his past - his daughter Eva Lind lies in a coma in the local hospital after a miscarriage and an old woman asks him why he is carrying a young boy around with him. The construction of this novel is intricate and it is almost impossible to solve the mysteries until the very end. Indridason draws into it a fascinating local legend about an orgy at the local gasworks on the night Halley's comet nearly struck the earth in 1910. Translated into English from Icelandic in 2005.

VOICES, rating 5.0
The doorman at a Reykjavik hotel who doubles every year as Santa at Christmas parties in the hotel is found dead by one of the hotel maids, stabbed to death, in his squalid basement room. Christmas is fast approaching and the detective Erlendur is confronted by the problem of how or even if he is going to celebrate Christmas. Is there anything to celebrate? Strangely he moves into the hotel while the investigation of the murder is carried out just feeling he can't go back to his flat. This is Indridason's 3rd novel to be translated into English. It was originally published in 2003 and made it into English in 2006. Erlendur of course eventually solves the murder mystery but along the way we learn a lot about the ghosts of his own past, and gain insight into his relationship with his drug-addicted daughter Eva Lind. And even in the last 10 pages we are still juggling candidates for the killer.

THE DRAINING LAKE, rating 4.7
After an earth tremor, the water level in an Icelandic lake begins to drop as water drains out through fissures in the lakes bed. Eventually it drops low enough to reveal the skeleton of a murder victim, probably there for a number of years and anchored to a piece of Russian radio equipment. The search for the identity of this person is a fairly lengthy and tedious process but murders and missing persons are pretty rare in Iceland where everybody knows everybody. Woven into the murder investigation is the story of idealistic young Icelandic socialists, party members chosen to be educated at university in Leipzig in East Germany, and then also more about Erlendur's own family and his children who flit in and out of his life. Originally published in Icelandic in 2004, the 4th of Indridason's books to be translated into English.

My full reviews:
4.8, ARCTIC CHILL
5.0, HYPOTHERMIA
4.5, OPERATION NAPOLEON

As I said earlier Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is someone whom I have yet to read, but she has already produced an impressive list of titles.

• Þriðja táknið (2005), (English translation by Bernard Scudder: Last Rituals, USA:2007, UK:2008)
• Sér grefur gröf (2006) (English translation by Bernard Scudder and Anna Yates: My Soul to Take, 2009)
• Aska (2007) (English translation, Ashes to Dust, UK:July 2010)
• Auðnin (2008) (Veins of Ice)
• Horfðu á mig (2009)
• Ég man þig (2010)

Yrsa occasionally blogs at MURDER IS EVERYWHERE along with Jeff Siger, Tim Hallinan, Dan Waddell, Leighton Gage, Michael Stanley, and Cara Black. 

According to Wikipedia there are 3 other Icelandic crime fiction writers to look out for, but none of their work has as yet been translated into English:

• Árni Þórarinsson
• Óttar M. Norðfjörð
• Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson