Well crafted characters, an underlying sense of menace and an immersive narrative combine for a suspenseful, one sit read.

I didn’t enjoy this as much as I thought I would, but it was still a well crafted story with many twists and turns. I think my issues comes from the unlikable characters. I also struggled with the complex plot as I found myself getting confused and having to backtrack to fully understand what was going on. I really liked the dark atmosphere and the writing really complimented that. All in all, worth a read, but I’m unsure if I’ll continue the series.

An enjoyable read that kept me on the edge of my seat and guessing constantly with all the twists and turns. I didnt know what or who to believe.

WHAT A STORY! Amazing. Such detail and every page seemed to make me gasp. This story had everything, horror, shock and the grit a story like this needs, will definitely read more of this author.

Everything I said about The Darkness Knows and more.

Probably Arnaldur Indriðason’s best book and I absolutely loved and devoured the Inspector Erlendur series.

We know Iceland is a small community and everyone is related along the way; “Everyone here’s related somehow.” - Almost a nod to his earlier work - Jar City.

I urge anyone who has enjoyed Scandi crime fiction to find this author. The gentle pace of writing makes reading the novel despite being translated in English such a smooth and enjoyable process. Big up to the work of the translator, Philip Roughton.
In former detective Konrád the author has a wonderful foil for dealing with cold cases. With retirement comes more time and the heart of a policemen still beats in him. His approach is honest, unspectacular and sometimes heavy handed but he has a wealth of experience, an active mind and good interrogation skills. Asking questions you know need answering but feel you wouldn’t be able to ask. Therefore he finds answers drawing on contacts, ex-cons and a few friends.

In this account we have a number of cases Konrád becomes involved in which makes for a complex investigation but never a confusing one for the reader to follow.

He is still looking for answers in his Father’s murder which has thrown up associations and links in the psychic community. His Father was never a true medium but with others would scam those looking for answers from the after life. Never straying into the occult or giving credence to such practices this sense of mysticism adds a depth to the story that brings him to investigate a young girl’s drowning many years ago. A case which he feels was never handled properly. The circumstances surrounding it will not leave him so he feels compelled to search for answers.

I like that he always keeps an open mind; wanting facts, evidence to support his theories as his investigations widen into something more sinister.

Alongside these cold cases, due to friends of his late wife seeking his “professional” help, he is drawn into a very modern story of drugs and broken dreams and lives.

Indriðason is such a thoughtful and considered writer that in time elements in all his enquiries highlight common themes. It becomes an excellent piece on abuse and violence upon women and young children. It is a commentary on society where in the past things were perhaps covered up and matters not spoken about openly. It is an indictment on a previous generation, evident in most countries and where change is slow even today.

I like fiction to carry a barb or two to challenge a reader’s attitude without glorifying crime; without excusing historical behaviour and attitudes and justifying cause and effect. But there are victims a plenty here and happily justice for the perpetrators in one way or another.

This book does not preach or hammer home modern woke values. Rather it sadly reflects historic crimes and by being investigated shines a light on past responses. In the process I feel both informed and impassioned to tackle similar circumstances in my own experiences. Personally to be less judgemental but speak out about injustice, abuse and offending behaviour.

All tied up in a readable story that delivers enjoyment as well these insights.

Please read it for yourself and let me know.

This is the second outing for Detective Konrad. Once again Indridason has given us a fantastic detective, interwoven a wonderful pair of mysteries and given us a gripping page-turner.

Recommended.

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I liked the book, the location and the main characters. Nordic noire feel to the book almost certainly!

The plot was first and foremost very disturbing! The author was skilled enough to keep you wanting to turn pages faster and faster - to find out what was going on/ going to happen!

I usually shy away from reading books that have any supernatural elements! This book however handled the issues with great care and left it to you to make your own mind up.

So well done, Arnaldur Indridason for writing this clever and intriguing book - a positive overall verdict for the story!

This was a very sad story about Child Abuse which was covered up by the authorities. A young psychic teams up with an expoliceman to track down the perpetrator. A rather chaotic story which eventually reaches a reasonable conclusion.

Detective Konrad is retired but when acquaintances ask him to look for their granddaughter he is pulled into a murder enquiry involving a drug smuggling ring. At the same time he is consulted by an old friend who is a medium haunted by visions of a young girl found drowned in 1961. As Konrad looks further into both cases he discovers that they are linked by a web of scandal and abuse going back many years.
Indriadson is a terrific writer and his depictions of the darker side of Iceland are wonderful. The plot here is complicated and the cases don't seem really linked for much of the story. However the ties that come through are very satisfying to the reader. The subject matter is unpleasant but it is handled with sensitivity.

This is another Icelandic noir offering from Arnaldur Indridason that demonstrates his ability to convey the darker side of Icelandic crime that stands in stark contrast to the beautiful country that is such a popular tourist destination for those who want to enjoy the outdoors with an extra twist of active geology. Again, the crime that the retired police detective investigates, who is the central character in this story, relates to events some years into the past. One of Indridason’s particular strengths is his ability to weave the past and the present into a convincing narrative, and ‘The Girl by the Bridge’ provides an excellent example of how the author’s ability in this area remains a strong feature of his writing.
Strongly recommended.

Icelandic godfather of crime, Arnaldur Indridason, is best known for his series starring Detective Erlendur, but in 2013, he introduced a new protagonist, Detective Konrád in The Shadow District. This was followed by The Darkness Knows and now—The Girl by the Bridge.

Konrád is the stereotypical cold-climate detective, sans the love for alcohol. Retired and rather fed-up with the police force, he tries to avoid dealing with people. When an elderly couple, acquaintances of his deceased wife, begs him to assist them in finding Danni, their granddaughter, he is understandably resistant. Despite his advice to work through the police, they are adamant that he be their point of contact. They claim that they want to avoid media attention, but their insistence doesn’t make sense.

Full review: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2023/04/03/the-girl-by-the-bridge-arnaldur-indridason/

A very disturbing Nordic Noir thriller , in which multiple strands of crimes over several time zones are all connected in a very sinister way.
1961, a young man sees a child’s doll floating in a pond. For some reason, he takes note of this and retrieves the doll from the water, then he catches a glimpse of a submerged object, and to his horror, discovers a young girls body.
1963, Eyglo is at a friends birthday party, she sees a young girl searching for her dolly. She realises the girl is a ghost when she raises no reflection in a mirror.
Present day, retired Police Detective Konrád, is asked to find Danni a young girl who has gone missing. Her Grandparents believe she is being used as a drug mule, and they would rather seek his help than go to the Police. Konrad has unresolved issues from the death of his late father, who was stabbed by persons unknown years ago.
All these strands are relevant and quite loosely connected at first, then more facts are discovered and do complicate this story, full concentration is required. It is a difficult read, with topics including child abuse, murders, torture, drug references, very dark and intriguing.
I found Detective Konrád to be an exceptionally through and interesting character, a very hard worker, keeping an open mind whilst suspecting everyone. I liked Eyglo, as a medium, her knowledge and skills brought an extra layer of interest and debate to this story. Mediums and spiritualist activity is not to everyone’s taste, but, in this story, it seemed appropriate somehow.
The first novel I have read from this author, rather a dry style to get used to, but effective.
My thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House and Vintage publishers for my advance digital copy, freely given in exchange for my honest review. I will post reviews to Goodreads and Amazon UK. A five star read.

An interesting storyline with links to mysticism with seances conducted by characters connected over two lifetimes. The disappearance of a young girl found seemingly overdosed is another plot line that eventually come together as the lead character discovers links to his own father’s demise in violent circumstances to current events. At times overly complex but ultimately a satisfactory read.

There is a beautiful symmetry to this tale, it deasl with the difficult subject of child sexual abuse and the abuse of power, it looks at the damage it does and how it affects lives. All this is sensitively handled and is necessary for the plot. There are two seemingly distant plots both in time and nature that come together in an unexpected way to combine into a strong narrative. Arnaldur Indidason's writing has always been good and this second outing for the detective Konrad does nothing to diminish his reputation only strengthening it as a master of his craft.

A main character that is hard to read and not very likable. Several plot lines that come together, but the characters stay a bit flat. A writing style that’s sometimes not able to keep the reader fully interested.
But still: an interesting book where the city of Reykjavik plays an important role and it’s somehow logical the atmosphere of the story is as cold, dark and bleak as the city it’s set in.
Konrad may have left the police force, people still ask him for his help. And one day two older people, who have a very loose acquaintance with Konrads deceased wife, ask him to help find their missing granddaughter. They fear for her because she admitted to smuggle drugs and her boyfriend is somehow involved in it too. Very reluctantly Konrad agrees so have a look but soon this leads to him being drawn back into his own past, and especially the time around the death of his father.
The missing granddaughter, the death of Konrad’s father and the girl that drowned by the bridge some 50 years ago all come together with a bit of an unusual twist. Although Konrad is not the average retired policeman, you cannot but admire him for his perseverance to try and solve the mysteries, for himself but for the bereaved who seek his help.

Konrad is asked by some acquaintances of his wife's to locate their granddaughter who is missing. He is reluctant to do this, but looks anyway and finds her body in the room of her boyfriend, apparently overdosed.
In the meantime, an old friend Eyglo, who is sensitive to the deceased, has been seeing a young girl on the bridge near the pond. The girl was found dead in the pond in the 1960s. Konrad gets drawn into looking into what happened.
The grandparents of Danni, the dead girls, pester him for updates to the police investigation and he discovers that things are as they seem.
This took a while to get into, but then rollercoastered to the end.

This book starts with man who sees a doll in a pond. Whilst fishing the doll out, he spots the body of a young girl also in the water. Moving on a few years, Eygló sees a ghost of a young girl at a classmate’s birthday party. We are then taken to the present day where a young woman, Danni, has gone missing. Her grandparents ask retired detective Konrad to look for her as they believe she is being used as a drugs mule. No spoilers here!
This book is part of a series based around retired detective, Konrad, but it stands alone so doesn’t matter whether you’ve read the other books.
Arnaldur Indridason has quite a dry, impassionate writing style but this is great if you enjoy genres such as Nordic noir.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book, in return for an honest review.

The book is another installment in the Konráð series (but the first one of them I read, to be fair). It starts with multiple seemingly unrelated storylines - a young drug using girl is found dead after an overdose (having recently acted as a drug mule for a major shipment), a young girl is found drowned in a pond 40 years earlier, while Konráð is trying to find out more about the murder of his father many years earlier. The stories continue developing rather independently for most of the book, with Konráð uncovering more and more facts that eventually tie them together.

Full disclosure - I'm a huge fan of Nordic Noir, and have read several of the author's novels prior to this (and watched the films). This is to say that I started reading this book with very high expectations. This book did not meet those expectations. On the plus side, it was as atmospheric and well-paced as I expected (which helped me finish it rather quickly). I also liked the neat tying-together of the disparate storylines at the end.

What I disliked most was the coincidences, which seemed to have been the driving force behind the progression of the plot (assuming that you don't believe in ghosts or clairvoyance). How did Konráð happen to just be outside the teacher's house just in time to save the day? The events surrounding the last scene in the hospital? The infamous doll? etc etc. It felt like the author was too lazy to create a narrative that tied itself together, and had to rely on coincidences to move things along.

I frankly have a deep aversion to the topic of clairvoyance and ghosts etc, and the ambivalence towards it in the story was infuriating. I therefore found Eyglo a very annoying character.

Overall - a great way to spend a few hours on the beach or on a flight. But don't expect anything special, memorable, or important. Solid, but forgettable.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House UK, Vintage for an advance copy of The Girl by the Bridge, the second novel to feature retired detective Konrád of the Reykjavik Police.

Konrád is asked by elderly grandparents to find their missing granddaughter, Danní, who has been working as a drugs mule. He’s not overly enthusiastic as he’s still trying to discover why his father was murdered years ago and looking in to the mysterious drowning of a young girl in the sixties.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Girl by the Bridge, which is an intricately plotted novel that held my attention from start to finish. I have not read the previous novel in the series, but I didn’t feel the loss as this works well as a stand-alone. The investigation into his father’s murder may be an ongoing thread, although it doesn’t feel like that as everything is explained clearly.

The novel has quite a dry, impersonal tone, as does most of the author’s work, but don’t be fooled into thinking that that makes it boring as the novel is jam packed with events and developments. In fact I love the way it is told as, somehow, the events have a greater impact without the emotion.

Konrád is juggling the three cases throughout the novel, although Danní’s case is more the concern of his detective friend, Marta. Still, he manages to poke his oar in from time to time due to his initial contact with her grandparents and Marta using him as a sounding board. The other two are mostly all his own work with not much progress on his father’s case and amazing developments on the drowning. I was impressed by the way the author manages to tangentially link all three cases in different ways and not as surprised or suspicious of the coincidence as I would have been if it had been set in any other country.

There are some dark themes in this novel, which I think the author handles well. He’s sensitive to the victims and puts their cases in historical context from an old indifference to the victims speaking out nowadays.

The Girl by the Bridge is a good read that I have no hesitation in recommending.