.fsntastic read, amazing series and under 300 pages so not too long ! Highly recommend

Did that ending actually happen? I had to read it a couple times to make certain I didn't miss something. As much of a surprise as it was, it may have been the best bit of the book. The Darkness, about Reykjavik Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdottir, about to retire at 64 and not too pleased about it, is a quick read. The story moves swiftly and seems to lack meat on the bone. I did like it but found it short on depth and, dare I say, too polite. Is everyone so polite in Iceland?

Hulda is the most frank character of the lot. She doesn't have time to waste as she works her last case, retirement looming large ahead of her. She is a delightful character with plenty of sarcasm, attitude and baggage, which is gradually revealed throughout the novel. I would have enjoyed getting to know Hulda better. She seemed a fascinating character who, likely, drove the superficial feel of the story as she was a tightly closed book, herself, for a number of fair reasons.

Really enjoyed this and read it over a day. Lots of twists and turns and I was very surprised at the ending! This is part of a series I think, but it did not matter that I hadn't read the previous installments. I would be keen to read more from this author.

From the beginning of 'The Darkness' I knew that my taste for noir was going to be well catered for. We have the weary police officer – a woman, as seems so often the case in Scandi-noir.

Our heroine, Hulda, reports to a barely competent boss. (Are there no competent senior male officers in Scandinavia? Not to judge from their detective fiction anyway.) She is coming up to retirement and her boss, anxious to sideline her, tells her to investigate an old case. So she ends up looking into the unexplained death of a woman found drowned by the shore more than a year earlier.

So far, so unremarkable. Hulda is a fully realised character with a complex back story which emerges as the book continues. You get quite a nice sense of Icelandic society – the long summer evenings, the isolation of everywhere outside Reykjavik, the continual worrying about money since the economic collapse, the beauty of the countryside and the ambivalent attitude to refugees. Much coffee is drunk.

As the story continues, though, the noir becomes rather dark, even for this genre. [SPOLERS IN NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS]

There’s been some controversy lately about the Staunch award for fiction which does not feature any acts of violence against women. This book would not qualify, even if the initial murder victim did not count. By the end, there is only one incidental female character who is not dead or in prison for a long time. I won’t tell you who that is, just so as not to spoil the suspense. Men get off comparatively lightly, although one minor character is also murdered. People are hit with rocks, an ice axe, and a car, or buried alive. Iceland has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. Two murders in a year would usually be considered a lot but Hulda’s case is looking to bust every record.

Basically, in this story every time somebody receives good news, it seems a prelude to a nasty death. Although the pace is lively and the story is involving, it gets a bit depressing after a while. I quite enjoyed it, but it won’t be to everybody’s taste.

As a mystery, it is reasonably satisfying. There are clues (I missed them all, but they were definitely there) and you might be able to work out whodunnit before Hulda does.

The story was written in Icelandic and translated into English and this has led to the odd infelicitous choice of words. I’m not sure that I really approve of “pale white” whatever Procul Harum said, and “leafy suburbs” have very different connotations in England from in Iceland. Generally, though, the book reads well. But if this were a coffee, it would be a triple-shot espresso without sugar. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Darkness is the first novel in Ragnar Jónasson's Hidden Island series. The novel follows Hulda Hermannsdóttir, a soon-to-be retired Detective Inspector with the Reykjavik Police Force as see tries to solve the mystery of a young female asylum seeker who has been found dead on a remote Icelandic beach. The case has been closed and dismissed as suicide, but everything is not as it seems...

This novel not only solves the mystery of how the young girl died, but also the mystery that is Hulda Hermannsdóttir. From the outset, the novel had me wanting to find out more about Hulda and how she had come to be in the circumstances that she was - I almost wanted to know Hulda's life story more than I wanted to know who was responsible for the death of the asylum seeker! The depth at which the character was explored, and the pain she felt over the course of her life was portrayed beautifully, with Hulda seeming almost haunted by her 'ghosts'.

In terms of the finding whether or not the young girl really did commit suicide or if it was indeed a murder - I did not see the ending coming. Although I loved the book and the monumental twist at the end, I also feel that the book ended very abruptly - almost as if parts of the story were left untold.

I am rating this book 4 out of 5 stars as apart from the abrupt ending, I cannot fault the book. I loved that the story was told from three different perspectives and that the plot slowly built up throughout the novel. I would highly recommend that anyone reads this and I am looking forward to the next installment.

Dark, dark, dark!

Although some 350 pages, I read this on my Kindle app and it seemed much shorter. Maybe that tells you something about the book!

Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdottir is nearing retirement and is not looking forward to it. When she interviews a woman who works in a nursing home about the hit-and-run accident of a known paedophile, she does little to realise that the decision she is about to make will affect the rest of her life.

Hulda is informed by her immediate boss that she is to be replaced by a younger man and that she will be retiring sooner than expected - in the next two weeks! Far from trying to fight this course of action, Hulda meekly goes along with it, but when the carrot of working on ‘anything that takes your fancy’ is dangled, she opts for a case that was, in her opinion, badly handled by a colleague.

“There was one unsolved incident that cried out to be re-opened”. An unexplained death of an immigrant, who was found on a local shore, had been put down to a suicide but it did not sit well with Hulda. What she finds is a catalogue of poor detective work and a dark and murderous cover-up.

Throughout this book, we keep getting glimpses of a young unmarried mother and her baby daughter who is forced to live with the grandparents. It is not until towards the end that we see where Ragnar Jonasson has been leading us.

Although this is a dark book, there is a lighter side to it with Hulda’s budding attachment to her friend Petur, which is certainly heading in the right direction and proves a balm to Hulda and all her worries.

As with his previous books, Ragnar Jonasson manages to provide us with a fine plot, characters who are big, bold and believable and an ending that the reader does not see coming. He also paints the landscape of Iceland extremely well – its cold, forbidding feeling and most of all, the darkness.

Thank you, Ragnar. Another fine book that I really enjoyed reading.

Sméagol

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to read

This is a good crime novel. It's extremely well written, great atmospheric backdrop etc. etc. I had two main issues. One, it was just too short. I felt that the characters and story could have done with more detail (but that may have ruined the ending). Two, it was too "noir" for me (it's called the darkness for a reason). So the three stars are that it just wasn't a good fit for me rather than a badly written novel. I will try his other works though.

I loved that the main character of the book is a female detective, Hulda, who is an the cusp of a reluctant retirement. Sidelined by her work colleagues and dismissed by her boss, she is granted permission to pick out a cold case and try to solve it before she leaves.
It is a slower read than most police procedurals, and the character of Hulda is very well constructed. The insights into her life, from childhood, through to her marriage and the painful events she endures were fascinating. I could empathise with her feelings of being marginalised, but could also see that she was quite stubborn and unaware of the consequence her actions could have on the work of her colleagues.
The ending of the book was quite a shock. Not because the author failed to signpost what was about to happen, far from it, it just didn't seem possible for what is the start of a new series.

Thanks go to netgalley and the publishers for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

I very much enjoyed this book about DI Hulda Hermannsdottir, an Icelandic Vera who at 64 was being encouraged to retire. Having just had a holiday in Iceland I could identify with the locations and terrain in the story. I even had a hot dog from the stand that Hulda did.
This was an easy book to read and it has certainly left me wanting more and I will be recommending it to friends and family.
I received this from Netgalley - thank you for the chance to read it.

I gave this author the benefit of the doubt last time, as I was reading the fourth in a series. But on this evidence I just think he's very minor in the realm of Icelandic genre writing. For one thing, this procedural could almost have been set anywhere, so you don't get the real feel for the place other authors provide. But principal here as regards flaws is the style, which is one of quite over-bearing exposition. If we get told once how the lead character feels about her new friend and the possibility of a new romance, we get told a hundred times. We also see FAR too much of her moaning about retirement, which makes her quite unlikeable as a result, some grumpy old cow forever moaning about being passed over, and not allowed to work to the grave.

Mind you, the way she acts in this case, making lone wolf blunder after lone wolf blunder, and never toeing the line once when it might actually help, makes you wonder why she was ever in the job.

Finally, as regards sins, the first third of the book is littered with foreshadowing of her deep, dark secret – and when the author abandons the bloody annoying "hee hee, I know more than you" drip-drip, and reveals the truth, it proves to be from another book entirely, thematically.

There are flashes of decent genre elements here, but a very bitty construction, such efforts spent in not telling us all we need to know til the very end, and a heroine with no redeeming features, all combined to make this a real slog.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when a police officer in fiction is near retirement they rarely are just going to get the carriage clock and vouchers. In this tale from Ragnar Jonasson (translated by Victoria Cribb) we see a familiar tale this time told in Iceland a land of remote lava fields and snow where people could easily vanish and combined with tales of secrets and loss. A noir tale with a very cold ending to match the setting.

In many ways this book is a character study with Hulda at the centre. She lost her husband long ago; has no close relatives and has been largely living for the job as a capable investigator. She has perhaps kept retirement to one side but suddenly finds her less than helpful Boss has decided she can go in two weeks rather than the several months she expected. Deciding upon one apparently cold case she moves into finding out how a Russian asylum seeker ended up drowned on a beach. Once she finds Elena had been told she was granted asylum the day before she vanished and then must quickly unpiece the real story a careless colleague ignored.

I really enjoyed the unravelling the mysteries of Hulda who we see in a variety of flashbacks had a quite hard childhood and the circumstances leading to the break up of her actual family have made her in many ways a trapped person. Tied to the job, eating fast food and ignoring a potential new relationship it’s refreshing to have a book focused on a 65-year-old woman rather than the usual anti-hero men crime in the past have focused on. Importantly she is not at all perfect and one theme in the book is that her battles with her childhood and the ingrained sexism of the police force mean her isolation and stresses have made her prone to rushing and making mistakes. She has a keen sense of justice but has in these last weeks started to react which means she puts herself in all sorts of firing lines.

Another impressive part of the book is the feel for Iceland. Its not simply a geographical joy it’s a place people live and die. While murder is unusual (one or two a year) there is a sense of something darker under the service. The book raises themes of how asylum seekers are treated and ignored. Few recall Elena she was just a cog in the machine that spits people out. There are also glimpses of more conservative times when a child born out of wedlock was a disgrace and mothers could find themselves separated from children with their families’ blessing. It’s a darker side to Iceland than many may have expected and adds a bitter noir flavour to the tale.

My one issue is that the crime itself and how this gets resolved I felt gets lost in the character study of Hulda. It felt sometimes more like a short story or novella where I think the detective is often far more interesting than the crime and in the last third of the book it came across as rushed reaching a very disturbing conclusion. Its memorable but never comforting. This is a crime tale with a focus on the consequences of secrets and its starkness will not be for all. There will not be a clean resolution but a reminder that our past can cause us great harm. Worth a read for those who enjoy noir at its darkest.

‪The Darkness by Ragnar Jonasson https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2018/3/24/the-darkness-by-ragnar-jonasson‬

This book is Scandi Noir at it's best, The books main character is Hulda Hermannsdottir who is a police officer that is nearing retirement and she really isn't looking forward to it. She is interviewing a suspect of hit and run but the interview was surprisingly short lived when the woman confesses. Hulda is then at a loose end when she is called to her superiors office only to be told she can retire early and could leave that very same day but she is horrified at the thought and she manages to get a further two weeks but will have to pick an 'old' case to work on and she knows exactly which she will pick as she is sure it wasn't done properly. A young Russian woman was found at a remote location very much dead with a head injury. She felt that this case would be her glory case but when she gets in to it she realises that it is more complex than she thought.
A great book that slowly sucks you in and then builds up to a very unusual crescendo.
Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of the book.

'The Darkness' by Ragnar Jonasson is a heart racing, brain teasing, action packed thriller. With only 263 pages it is full of excitement and suspense. The length of the novel left me wanting but it was perfect in creating and completing such a dangerous and electrifying story.

Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdottir is due to retire. With her replacement joining the force soon and her remaining cases in new hands she is told she can fill her last week by re-examining a cold case of her choice. Hulda has no idea at the time that the suicide case of a Russian asylum seeking will open up a huge can of worms including prostitution, murder and child abuse to name a few.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy of 'The Darkness' in return for an honest review. I really hope this become a series as I NEED to know more. Just one more book please!

Thanks to NetGalley and to Michael Joseph for providing me an ARC copy of this novel that I freely chose to review.
I’ve followed with interest the rise in popularity of the Nordic/ Scandinavian Thrillers in recent years, although I have read random titles rather than becoming a dedicated fan of any single writer. (I’ve also watched quite a few of the crime TV series produced in those countries and I’ve particularly enjoyed Wallander, The Bridge, and The Killing). This is the first novel I read by Ragnar Jónasson, although I suspect it won’t be the last.
The novel contains some familiar elements, although with interesting variations. The main character, Hulda, a Detective Inspector, that works in Reykjavík, is 64 and on her way to retirement. She is surprised by the news that this retirement has been brought forward, and, as an afterthought to keep her quiet, her boss tells her she can work on a cold case of her choice. She chooses the apparent suicide of a Russian girl, an asylum seeker because she mistrusts the lead investigator. The novel, written in the third person, mostly from Hulda’s point of view, follows her last three days in the force. I say mostly because there are other fragments that are told from other characters’ points of view, although at first, it is not that clear who they are. We come to understand how they relate to the main story later, but I must clarify that they are clearly distinct, easy to follow, and do not cause any confusion. They do provide additional information, a different perspective, and they help us understand the story and the characters more fully (and yes, they might also mislead us a tiny bit), although I suspect some readers might catch on faster than others as to their true relevance.
Hulda is a known standard of the genre: the old detective forced to leave the job that is determined to solve one last case before retirement. Only, in this case, she is a woman, and she does reflect on how difficult things have been for her because she is a woman, glass ceiling and all. She does share some of the other attributes sometimes typical of these characters: she is very good but not that very well liked; she has to work alone because she is not a favourite among the other detectives; she resents her younger boss and many of her teammates; she is effective but might bend the rules slightly; she is reserved and has suffered tragedies in her life… The author is very good at creating a very compelling character and then making us question our judgment. At least in my case, I really liked Hulda to begin with, but after a while, I realised that she might be one of those favourites of mine, an unreliable narrator (or, although not directly a narrator, her point of view is unreliable). She makes decisions that are morally questionable; she drinks a bit too much; and well… I am keeping my mouth shut. My feelings for this character went from really liking her, to not being so sure, to not liking her very much, and then… This change in opinion and perception is cleverly achieved and extremely well done, and it reminded me of books like We Need to Talk about Kevin (not the story itself, but the way the writer slowly makes us empathise with a character to later pull the rug from under our feet).
The story is dark in more ways than one. As I said, there are morally grey areas (or even quite dark): the subject matter and the fact that a young asylum seeker and her death are not considered important and have been all but forgotten a year down the line (unfortunately that rings true), Hulda’s own life and the secrets she keeps, and Iceland. Although there is not a great deal of violence (and definitely not explicit), there is a certain unsettling air and a cold and menacing atmosphere, that comes in part from Hulda’s paranoia and her personality (suspicious and mistrustful), but goes beyond it. The setting is very important and it contributes to the story and its effect on the reader. Iceland is a character in its own right. The descriptions of the many locations in the book create a picture in the reader’s mind and help understand how important the place is to the mood, the characters, and their way of life. A place where light and darkness rule people’s lives, and where the inhabitants have adapted to conditions many of us would find difficult and hostile. The title is apt for many reasons (as we learn as we read on). It is a noir novel, where nobody is exactly as they appear at first, and where red herrings, false clues, and side-stories muddy the storyline, adding layers of complexity to what appears straightforward, at first.
The writing is fluid, and versatile, providing different registers and clearly distinct voices for the different aspects of the story and the varied points of view, and although it is a translation, it is well-written and the style fits in perfectly the content. It is not the usual fast-paced thriller, but one that builds up tension and organically incorporates the psychology of the characters and the setting into the story.
A couple of examples:
Time was like a concertina: one minute compressed, the next stretching out interminably.
‘She’s being deported. It happens. You know, it’s a bit like those games of musical chairs you play as a kid. The music starts, everyone gets up and walks in a circle and when the music stops, one of the chairs is taken away and someone’s unlucky.’
The ending… I will not talk in detail about it but although perhaps not unexpected, is a bit of a shocker.
A great (and not long) novel for lovers of Nordic thrillers, or anybody who enjoys thrillers that deviate from the norm. I’d also recommend it to anybody intrigued by Iceland and unreliable narrators. And I’d also recommend it to authors always intrigued by other authors’ technique and voice. I intend to keep reading the series. And enjoying it.

If you are into Scandi-noir fiction then this will not disappoint.It has all the hallmarks of the genre-feisty female cop,strange characters,dramatic landscapes ,dealing with the dark side of human nature.It tells of an investigation into the death of an asylum seeker which was classed as suicide but which could be murder.
It's well translated and reads better than many translations I have read in the past.It's the first of a trilogy by this author, and I would happily read the other two,in spite of the fact that the ending of The Darkness will stay with me for a long time to come.

This is the first book I have read by this author and was hugely impressed. It’s a relatively short novel but Mr. Jonasson doesn’t waste his words and has packed in a huge story with several different sub-pl;ots. On one level, this is another variation on the “troubled detective” theme so popular with crime authors. But this is a multi-layered novel and whilst the resurrection of a cold case by an under-rated female detective forced into early retirement forms the central plot, the author seems to be more interested in exploring a number of social issues which he does so in a way that adds rather than detracts from the main plot.
I agree with other reviewers that Hulda, the main protagonist, is not a particularly likeable character but this made her more human and as her back story is gradually filled in, we begin to understand why she is who she is.
Three quarters of the way through, this novel takes a totally unexpected turn which leads eventually to a devastating climax and it says a lot for the skill of the author that this did not seem out of context.
This was not an easy read and at times, it was very uncomfortable but equally it was thought provoking and extremely well written.

I have been a fan of Ragnar Jonasson’s since the moment he burst onto the scene with his Dark Iceland series. There were five books in the series (‘Snowblind’, ‘Nightblind’, ‘Blackout’, ‘Rupture’ & ‘Whiteout’) released when Ragnar was first published by Orenda Books, run by Karen Sullivan. When I heard that another book was to be released by Ragnar, I could not wait to get my hands on a copy. I was not to be disappointed.
I have to admit to feeling more than a little protective of Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdottir from the start of the book. She is a career police officer, who is fast approaching retirement. She doesn’t want to go but she is being forced to leave sooner rather than later because her boss wants rid of her so that he can slot one of his friends into the post. Hulda sees the police force as one big boys club where it’s not what you know but who you know that affects your chances of promotion. Hulda tried to go for promotion but she was passed over in favour of men, who were less qualified than her and less able than her. Gulda is certainly cynical but I think that her career has made her that way. All her cases are reassigned behind her back and her boss tells her that in the short period of time she has left, she can look at a cold case and see if she can make any headway with that. I don’t think her boss expects her to succeed in any way. Little does he know…….. Outside of work, Hulga doesn’t really have much of a personal or social life. She did have a husband and a daughter but not now. Hulga is trying to dip a toe in the water of dating again but wonders if she may perhaps be a bit old for that sort of thing. Gulda does start seeing another man but she isn’t really sure how quickly or how far she wants the relationship to go. So to avoid thinking about what awaits her after she retires, Gulda throws herself into investigating the cold case of a murdered asylum seeker, who appears to have been forgotten by everybody (except Gulda) and everything. Will Gulda manage to solve the cold case? Well for the answer to that question you are just going to have to read the book for yourselves to find out as I am not going to tell you.
I have to say that this is a very promising start to another series. The writing style is such that I was drawn into the story from the moment I started reading from the first word on the first page. The book started in such a dramatic way that I couldn’t help but become hooked. After that, reading ‘The Darkness’ became an addiction and I could not bear to be parted from the book, which meant that it came everywhere with me. I just needed another ‘fix’ of one more page, one more chapter and so on and so forth.The character of Gulda was so well described and written that I started to care about her, feel protective of her and I was rooting for her to leave her career on a high. At the same time I so wanted to jump inside the pages of ‘The Darkness’ to hit those people, who upset or irritated Gulda several dozen times across the chops with a wet fish. I know that a book is good when I feel like doing something like that. I know, I know it’s a work of fiction but if a book is well written, I find that I start to ‘live’ the story. It’s true that ‘The Darkness’ is not fast paced in the style of a Hollywood blockbuster but I think that in this case the slower pace is to the book’s advantage. ‘The Darkness’ is one heck of a rollercoaster read with lots of twists, turns and moments where you just don’t know what is going to happen next. There were a few times when I almost couldn’t turn the page over as I feared for Gulda’s welfare or thought that her superiors were going to do the dirty on her.
In short, I absolutely LOVED reading ‘The Darkness’ and I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to other readers. I can’t wait to read the next book in the series called ‘The Island’, which is due for release on 7th March 2019. In the meantime I will just content myself with re-reading all of Ragnar’s other books- both those published by Orenda Books and this one. The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a well deserved 5* out of 5*.

This book was an interesting read, I think that I should have read others by the author previously as I struggled to get to grips with it.
The writing was good, atmospheric and descriptive.
I found some of the flashbacks a little bit tedious,
I also struggled to like the main character, considering her experience as a detective, I would have thought that she would have been a stronger personality.
Thanks to NetGalley, Ragnar Jonasson and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Hulda is coming to the end of a police career but is given the chance to revisit a cold case before she retires. She picks the supposed suicide of a young Russian girl. She soon realizes it was no suicide but murder and linked to another girl who went missing. Can she find the truth before her own life is in danger.

Wow what a read this was. I love these sort of stories. There's lots going on and the mystery is very clever. There are many twists in the plot and the ending wow. It really does catch you out as it's not what I expected. It's clever though.

Hulda is an interesting character. I really like her and found myself feeling for her as the story develops.

A Twist filled dark thriller.

I really wanted to enjoy this book but I got a third of the way in and it really wasn’t gripping me. Not much had happened apart from a cold case that needs investigating, but the trouble with cold cases is that no one wants to talk. I felt frustrated for Hulda, the person digging to the case and this wasn’t really helping me get any further into the book I’m afraid