Review of THE DARKNESS by Ragnar Jónasson

 2.5 Stars

This is the first instalment of the Hulda Hermansdóttir Icelandic crime fiction trilogy.

Sixty-four year old Hulda is nearing retirement.  Wanting to make the most of her remaining time as detective, she sets out to investigate the case of Elena, a Russian asylum-seeker whose body washed up on shore.  Her death, about a year earlier, was deemed a suicide but Hulda thinks the initial investigation was sloppy.  Very quickly, Hulda is convinced Elena was murdered.

The most interesting part of the book is the character of Hulda.  Other than the Vera Stanhope series by Ann Cleeves, police procedurals do not tend to focus on older female detectives.  Throughout her career, Hulda has faced challenges as a woman in a male-dominated field.  Nonetheless, she loves her job and worries about adjusting to retirement.  From the beginning, there are hints that Hulda has dark secrets which are only slowly revealed.

It is the nature of these secrets that kept my interest.  The case Hulda investigates is bland and simplistic.  The clues are so obvious, beginning with the revelation that Elena spoke very little English.  Only a totally inattentive reader would not identify the murderer from the very first clue.  The murderer and his motive are stereotypical.  There is no nuance.  The writer seems to lack imagination because there are no twists and investigative leads just appear fortuitously.  The ending will come as a shock but it is manipulative because this is the first book of the series. 

Though Hulda is an interesting character, there are problems with her portrayal, particularly as concerns her work.  Regardless of the situation and her understandable empathy, Hulda’s decision concerning the woman she is interviewing at the beginning makes no sense.  A dedicated career police officer would not behave as she does.  Hulda’s repeated disregard for procedure calls into question her experience.  She has limited time to conclude the investigation but she lets herself sleep in for two days?!  She ignores phone calls and more than once turns off her phone though “she liked to be available day and night.  You couldn’t always, or maybe ever, conduct complex police investigations within normal office hours.”  And a supposedly intelligent and experienced investigator misses the obvious and instead focuses on someone just because of his appearance?!  She comes across as a bumbling amateur instead of the intelligent, seasoned investigator she is supposed to be. 

Interspersed with Hulda’s investigation is the story of a single mother in 1948 struggling to care for her illegitimate daughter.  Considering Hulda’s conversation with Pétur during their first interaction in the novel, it is not difficult to guess who this woman is.  The question is why so much attention is given to the woman’s story.  The details seem unnecessary.    The story also has the effect of lessening the tension that the reader would feel if the narrative had focused on Hulda’s investigation. 

There are unrealistic scenes.  The suicide of a 13-year-old would not be thoroughly investigated?  Even if there is an underlying medical condition, wouldn’t an autopsy be performed when someone dies unexpectedly?  Medication can easily be replaced with a useless substitute without anyone suspecting? 

At best, this is a mediocre contribution to the genre of Nordic noir.