Arnaldur Indriðason's Books

Biography

Arnaldur Indriðason was born in Reykjavik in 1961. His father was a newspaperman, working as both a journalist and editor at the Icelandic newspaper Tíminn. Arnaldur says that one of the first things he remembers as a child was the sound of his father clacking away on a typewriter. Perhaps it was inevitable that Arnaldur became a writer.

Critical Acclaim

His big international break came when his novel — Jar City — won the Glass Key award for Scandinavian crime writing. The award led to a flurry of translations into other European languages, and Indriðason went on to achieve critical acclaim. The next novel in the Erlendur series, Silence of the Grave, won the Gold Dagger award in 2005. As well as his stories about the gloomy Icelandic detective, he has written several novels linking historical crimes to the modern-day, including Operation Napoleon and the Shadow District.

Writing Style

Arnaldur Indriðason’s books have been described as “terse” or “elegant and spare”. He has also been accused of writing thrillers that aren’t “especially thrilling”. He does get straight to the point clearly and compellingly, leaving the reader to fill in the flowery bits. He draws out the human tragedies of crimes. In Jar City, the key to the story is a girl who died of a rare genetic disease. Her death leads the police to a company that the government had asked to collate and study the genetic records of the Icelandic population. It would have been easy for Arnaldur to twist the story and create a high-tech drama, but that isn’t his way. Instead, he focused on the human costs of living in such a small, isolated society, where everybody knows somebody who knows you.

Murder in a Small Country

It is Iceland’s size that provides Indriðason’s biggest problem. The country has a population of about a third of a million people. That is roughly the same number of people as Coventry in the UK or Cleveland in the US. Not only is Iceland tiny, but it also has the third-lowest murder rate in the world.

Roughly one person is murdered in Iceland every year.

Mr Indriðason has written 22 novels, each with a body count of about three. Mathematically he has single-handedly cleared up every murder in Iceland since World War II. Realising that this is a bit of a stretch, even for the most ignorant of non-Icelandic readers, his novels focus on cold cases and missing persons.

Unfortunately for Iceland’s tourist board, Indriðason’s success has liberated many other Icelandic crime writers. You should be very wary if you visit the country. There is undoubtedly a Burke and Hare-Esque trade in dead bodies for aspiring authors.

As Arnaldur has said:

“It is very rewarding writing for an Icelandic readership which, because of its small size, is probably the most difficult in the world for crime fiction. It ought not to be possible to write crime fiction in Iceland because nothing happens here. And it’s extremely difficult to convince readers of anything else.” (Icelandic Literature Centre)

Read more at Reykjavik City of Literature