Sigurdardottir’s new novel, The Doll was something I wasn’t expecting. I was looking for one of those horror novels about a creepy doll and I got so much more and it was well worth the read.

The Doll is full of surprises that threw me off delightfully. From the opening pages, I felt ok, here we go and then it twists and turns into a mystery novel that really wowed me from the first. The narrative and storytelling are superb and the landscape of Iceland is a wonder to behold. This is not a straight forward road but a twisty turning pathway that takes the reader by the hand and with the shocking and surprising conclusion simply floors the reader into thinking, what have I just read and where has this writer been all my life.

The characters are strongly written and there are some surprise deaths that I wasn’t quite expecting. The police and social care workers are wonderfully drawn out and the misplaced children are very well described. Sigurdardottir keeps her characters firmly within reality and whilst the professional team are bogged down with policy and procedure, you can tell that the author did extensive background work that adds a natural reality to the work.

The plot is well constructed and as stated above, the author is able to pull off the many twist and turns and red herrings to keep the reader on their toes. This is not an easy task and she does this winningly.

Overall, this is a jaw dropping, intense, mystery bound book that is firmly placed within the horror, mystery and thriller subgenres that make this is a winning combination. The only bad side is that on a marketing side that the book would make one think that it is getting a horror Annabelle type story when in fact this book is a whole lot more. Sigurdardottir’s other work will make it across the world because if this is anything to go by, this one is someone to keep an eye on. Iceland fiction is the world’s gain. Excellent.

The Doll by Yrsa Sigurdardottir is right centre in the canon of Scandinavian dark crime.

Take a detective trying to get his career back on track, a faithful colleague, a hint of romantic interest, add in a sprinkle of child abuse, part of a skeleton dragged out of the sea, an unexplained murder of a drug addict, some organised crime, and some remote locations and you have classic scandi fare.

Good but not great, somewhat predictable but enjoyable.

This is a superior slice of Icelandic noir.

A young girl insists on keeping a creepy doll that gets tangled in a fishing net and the next morning her mother is dead and the doll has disappeared. Years later, a young British couple fly to Iceland but end up murdered and their bodies dumped at sea. A homeless drug addict is subsequently found dead and there are links to possible child abuse cases from years ago.

Everything hinges on finding the young girl - now a teenager - who links all the stories together, but she too has disappeared.

Huldar and his police colleagues, led by the irascible Erla, are faced with unravelling the truth, but the process is an intense and not always straightforward one. They are assisted by Freyja, a child psychologist who has worked with Huldar before.

Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is a clever writer who knows when to spare details and when to emphasise them. The plot is tightly constructed but always keeps your attention where it needs to be. At the same time, you are left guessing until almost the end of the book to find out what links all the various events together and there is one unexpected twist in the final chapter that you won't see coming.

The writing is atmospheric and maintains a creepiness and uneasy tension throughout - this is definitely not a book to read last thing at night but once started you will want to finish it.

You don't need to have read the previous books featuring Huldar and Freyja to enjoy this as a standalone story, but I suspect it will help in understanding the relationship between the main protagonists.

As this is the fifth book in the series, I will now look out for the others and recommend this one.

I was sent an advance review copy of this book by Hodder & Stoughton, in return for an honest appraisal.

Have read this author before and she is always a good read. The doll does not get mentioned till quite late in the book, it gets mentioned when it's first picked up in a fishing net and then the story starts but the doll aspects of the story seem to be in the last quarter of the book, but a lot going in to keep you going and guessing. The book does keep going backwards and forwards and bones caught in a fishing net, a homeless man murdered are they connected?
Very complex and dark with creepy undertones.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an ARC copy to read.

I struggled to get into this one. I also had not realised before I started it that this is part of a series. No sure I will be reading the other books, this one was not for me.

Wasn't a fan of her other books but I have enjoyed this series. They hit differently to us/UK crime books

I hadn’t read any of Ysra’s books before, but I was blown away by the depth, layering and tight interweaving of the plot with wonderful characterisation and engaging yet pertinent dialogue.
The story starts with a creepy doll being caught in the fishing net. The girl who was on a boat wants to keep the doll and her mother agrees. The next day the mother is found dead, the doll disappears and no one believes Rósa that her mother was murdered. Rosa ends up in care.
There is too much else to tell without going into too much detail and risking sharing the plot. But it is completely immersive and feels very plausible. There is a history of young people that have experienced trauma and end up being looked after children; against a backdrop of some drugs and alcohol use, with very murky goings on.
Freyja is a psychologist that supports part of the investigation who is entirely likeable. Her relationship with Huldar an investigator is warm and supportive in grim, testing times. Other interest comes from the over keen geeky junior, Lena, who is effective and a source of amusement.
Don’t be put off by the doll being akin to horror, it is just an item, albeit a bit grotesque, that is a linchpin and nothing more. Gripping, clever and incredibly tightly controlled, to me an excellent and recommended read.

Impressive and professional and effective writing .. I was at first befuddled by our moving on from one seeming s.d story to another; I'd expected a kind of horror novel with jinxed doll but it swerved away from that. While it took me time to get back into the narrative as a result I was extremely impressed by author's skills and the story steamed on to satisfactory conclusion.

The first book I have read by this author.
Although a series I still found it readable as a standalone.

Was fast paced easy read that had me gripped

If you like Scandic-noir books then this is a good one for you.
The book is descriptive and the storyline is intriguing with different cases being investigated initially. This is definitely a book where you cannot identify "whodunnit' before the end despite the evidence that the detectives keep discovering.
Thankfully all is eventually revealed with no loose ends left to irritate. I especially appreciated how the conclusion was pulled together for the reader.

Disa and her daughter Rosa discover a hideous doll one fishing trip, which they keep. What then follows is a number of random deaths but all seem to be connected to the doll.

I love Icelandic police dramas. This is my first book by this author and I now need to go and devour more of Ysir's work. The descriptive writing has you almost feeling the mist and darkness of the scenery. I visit Iceland a lot for work so could totally visualize all the locations. However, I have seen them in a way more beautiful light! The author will not be invited to the Icelandic tourist board's lunch I am sure. I loved the characters and the story was so gripping - a real whodunnit and why. The Doll is a creative and wonderfully gripping story.

Yrsa Sigurdardottir is such an underrated crime writer; she should be as big a name as Val McDermid and Ian Rankin. Her books are great and The Doll is no exception.

The Doll by Yrsa Sigurdadottir
The story begins with a hideous barnacle covered doll being caught in a fishing net on a boat where by Rosa Thrastdottir and her mother Disa are enjoying a day out. It seems very unlikely that Rosa will want to keep the doll but she does. Then Rosa’s mother dies leaving Rosa an orphan and her stories begin about the death being caused by the doll. Five years later bones of two people are found on the sea bed in Faxafloi Bay. Then sex abuse allegations are made against children’s home manager Bergur Alvarsson. This seems like a series of unconnected events so, how do they connect?

I had not read the previous book in the series and therefore got a bit lost in places I also found the route to the relevant information convoluted. I did not find the ‘horror’ element frightening and that aspect of the novel was not developed. Some of the discoveries of evidence in the case seem a little too coincidental.

Overall, it’s quite readable but I do not think this is one of the author’s better novels.
Many thanks to the author, Hodder and Stoughton and Net Galley for a copy of the book in return for an honest review.

Two seemingly unrelated events bring Freya and Huldar together again. But how are these two cases related and what about the old, creepy doll? I was hooked after the first few chapters and couldn’t stop reading.

First time for me reading this author and overall I really enjoyed it. Not for the fainthearted though with the amount of gruesome deaths which occur in it! It is a bit slow to begin with and I do feel that at times, the story becomes a bit 'lost' due to translation however it is worth a read if you like the Scandi-noir books.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC to review.

The story starts with a Mother and Daughter out on a boat fishing with a colleague of the Mother. They 'catch' a doll, which is pretty manky and covered in barnacles. The Mother wants to throw it back, but the Daughter insists on keeping it.
Fast forward a few years and the Mother has died in an accident, leaving Rosa, her daughter,an orphan as her Father had perished prior to finding the Doll. Rosa has disappeared from her current foster placement and the police are looking for her as a witness to some abuse claims from a group home.
Rosa has made claims in the past that her mother and father were both murdered and it was all to do with the doll. For obvious reasons no one believes her.
Meanwhile, bones are found in the spot that the doll had previously been recovered from and it appears that the bones belong to victims of murder.
As the books progresses, there are more murders and all of the incidents start to fuse together.
I enjoyed reading this once I had found it's stride, but it took a little while. It's worth carrying on.

I have previously read novels by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir; however, I haven’t read any her ‘Childrens Series’ and The Doll is book 5 in the series. Jumping in on book 5 didn’t present any problems as sufficient background information was provided. I thought the book was heading in a supernatural direction when the doll appeared to smile but I’m pleased to say this is traditional Nordic noir, a police procedural novel, carefully plotted and good characterisation.
So getting on to the plot: five years ago Dísa and her daughter, Rósa, go on a family fishing trip and net an old barnacled doll. Dísa wants to throw it back into the sea but Rósa insists on taking the doll home. In the morning Rósa discovers her mother dead in the bathroom and the doll is missing.
The story moves to the present day with Detective Hulder investigating a possible murder when bones are found in the sea and drawing on psychologist Freyja's experience to help him investigate a suspected case of child abuse at a foster care home. The novel reaches a satisfying conclusion to connect all the separate strands in this story. There are a number of coincidences that connect the characters but, I guess, Iceland is a small place.
A great bit of storytelling with a final twist that I wasn’t expecting.

A brilliantly written thriller that will give you chills and thrills its well written and well plotted that makes this a unique thriller to read.

We cover a lot of Icelandic crime fiction on this site, so to have had nothing until now from the famous Yrsa Sigarðardóttir has been a serious omission. But I approached The Doll with some trepidation: it’s had so-so reviews and somehow I had got the idea this would be a supernatural adventure, which isn’t my sort of thing. ‘It’s too complicated,’ said too many reviewers, but an outstanding review from the always excellent Jen Lucas reassured me. So let’s start by saying: this book is not supernatural - it’s a police procedural. And to use ‘procedural’ language, there are about four moving parts, or as we usually call them, sub-plots, involving addiction, alleged abuse, blackmail and going on holiday by mistake. Sigarðardóttir does her best to mix them all up. So there is a great deal going on. But this is not a difficult book to follow. Sigarðardóttir avoids undue red herrings. It would have been good to have been familiar with the characters: Huldar, Erla and Freyja all have previous and there’s plenty of to and fro as they bicker and flirt. But, again, it isn’t too hard to work it all out. And Victoria Cribb has done a good translation. So don’t be scared.
I was about half way through the book when I listened to Rafael Behr’s Politics on the Couch podcast. Behr and his guest Lee de-Wit discussed moral psychology and, in particular, the idea that fairness means different things to the left (the reduction of oppression) and the right (chaos is unfair, order is not). It isn’t an original thought to apply this tension to the best of the crime genre, but I was more aware of it as I raced through the second half of the book. The Doll weaves together so many different notions of fairness and justice and, for a police procedural, is relatively relaxed about what we might now call the ‘order’ question. The end of the novel will have you aware of both the neatness of the plot but also the random unfairness and messiness of that plot’s effect on the main characters and in particular Rósa whose burden is appalling to witness. But then there’s an epilogue, and a final twist. Without the twist, this is a crime novel worth reading, but the epilogue takes it all to the next level: it’s about redemption and second chances. And this is where Behr and de-Wit come back in. Sigarðardóttir uses the force of the twists and turns to ask us where we stand on the fairness continuum. As the West Wing fictional character Robert Ritchie would say: ‘Crime. Boy, I don’t know.’ Huldar and Erla and Freyja will carry on dealing with it. Sigarðardóttir will carry on writing about it. And on the one hand crime fiction of this quality is something to applaud. But, as another fictional character once said, doesn’t that bother you?