Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
This debut novel by the enigmatic Erlendur Arason is the first Icelandic crime thriller of the "Reykjavík Shadows" series. It features the likeably naive Torfi Pall Saeversson, a supervisor at the Bristol Hotel [in downtown Reykjavík] who finds himself accidentally at the centre of a murder that may prove to conceal other horrors.
Following the takeover of the hotel that had been in the Guomann family for generations, the ever reliable and trustworthy supervisor Torfi finds himself in front of newly appointed HR Manager Sigridur [aka ‘Sigga’ behind her back] and Operations Manager Asbjorn. It seems the new owners [Nordique Group] have plans to trim headcount which includes making Torfi’s supervisory position redundant. The news is totally unexpected as Torfi has been in the employ of the Guomann family for over a decade becoming a valued and essential part of the Bristol Hotel’s staff team. He’s become part of the furniture.
He and his second wife Stjana [together with his teenage stepsons Arnar and Anton] live paycheque-to-paycheque on his meagre wages; that’s even with Stjana working as an administrator for Nordique Group head office. Torfi knows every aspect of the business from Reception, Restaurant, Bar and Housekeeping - so he is shocked to hear of his upcoming unemployment. Pleading to Asbjorn and Sigridur citing his reliability and long service record, he panics at the HR meeting. A surreal misunderstanding causes the two executives to rethink Torfi’s planned redundancy. Instead of losing his supervisory position, he is offered an immediate promotion to front-of-house manager, which comes with a generous pay-rise and regular bonuses [paid in brown-enveloped cash]. Torfi tells his wife Stjana that things are looking up. With his first cash bonus, he pays off his credit cards and takes his wife and two teenage stepsons for a summer beach holiday.
On his return, Torfi finds there is a price to pay for the sudden [and unexpected] good fortune.
Down in the Bristol Hotel’s kitchen, kindly breakfast chief, the Albanian Manuela serves thick sweet porridge and steaming mugs of coffee each morning covertly to a small group of unfortunate homeless vagrants. Torfi has always known that Manuela feeds Raggi [aka Ragnor], Laki [aka Thorlakur], Gyda, Ingi and Patrekar et. al. turning a blind eye as long as this homeless group are fed and on their way by 6am, when the official breakfast for the Hotel’s guests commences. This is one example of social commentary that the author peppers in this novel, contrasting the kindness of the foreign-born breakfast chief toward the less fortunate people living in the deep cold of an Icelandic winter.
Torfi is instructed to give a verbal warning by Asbjorn and Sigridur to the Bar Supervisor Gudjon Andri Jonsson with an added threat that any further shortfall in performance could result in dismissal. Confronting the Bar Supervisor, Torfi is surprised when Gudron Andri is nonplussed by the warning. Later, the Bar Supervisor is hospitalised by an unprovoked attack on his way home, and his deputy the Albanian-born Ljena has to take the role of Bar Supervisor when Gudron Andri decides not to return to work – then the proceedings take a dark turn for Torfi.
By accepting the promotion and cash bonuses, Torfi may have entered into a Faustian pact, and perhaps the Hotel’s Operations Manager Asbjorn and Head of Human Resources Siridur have something to hide.
The incongruous Icelandic detective team of Dagny Thorlaksdottir and Hauker Grimsson arrive at the Bristol Hotel much to the alarm of Torfi. It appears that a young man [Leo Freyr] has gone missing. He was last seen by CCTV in the Bristol Hotel bar with a man named Alberto, or was he?
To complicate Torfi’s life further, his wife Stjana informs him that his estranged daughter from his former marriage Bjort is coming to stay with them. Questions from Nordique group H.Q. gnaw at Torfi. Have the informal breakfast club for the homeless witnessed something that they shouldn’t have observed? And all the while, police detectives Dagny and Hauker circle the Bristol Hotel as the irregularities start to mount up, and Torfi realises that he may be ‘the fall guy’ for a series of unspeakable crimes.
Arason’s slim thriller is written with humour and empathy that helps mask the dark underbelly that lurks under the narrative. At times the phraseology is sharp and jarring as if the author [and/or translator] wishes to unsettle or remind the reader that they are observing foreigners in a foreign land.
The surreal situation that unfolds around Torfi [Pall Saeversson] grips the reader tighter than the icey embrace of an Icelandic winter. This promises to be the start of an extraordinarily addictive series of Nordic/Scandinavian crime thrillers.
Arason’s novel is like a narcotic – after this first dose, you’ll be in need of another fix from the “Reykjavík Shadows”.
Translated into the English Language by Quentin Bates.
