Helgi Reykdal,<\/a> he was lying unconscious in a pool of blood after being bashed in the head by his violent alcoholic wife in last fall\u2019s \u201cDeath at the Sanatorium.\u201d<\/p>\nBut now, in the opening of Ragnar J\u00f3nasson\u2019s \u201cThe Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer,\u201d the cliff-hanger has been resolved. Helgi has recovered from his injury and is enjoying life with a new girlfriend named Anita.<\/p>\n
J\u00f3nasson is a devoted fan of puzzle mysteries by Agatha Christie and other writers from the genre\u2019s golden era and has given Helgi the same obsession, so the young detective is thrilled to investigate the sudden disappearance of bestselling crime novelist Elin S. Jonsdottir.<\/p>\n
The tale is told in three timelines. In 2005, a journalist is interviewing Elin, who reveals much about her life and work before finally disclosing a dark secret. In 2012, Helgi is searching for her. And in 1976, Helgi\u2019s predecessor, detective Hulda Hermannsdottir (who subsequently also went missing) is investigating a bank robbery that may or may not have some connection to Elin.<\/p>\n
J\u00f3nasson, whose novels have sold 3 million books worldwide, writes in his native Icelandic, and as usual, Victoria Cribb has done a fine job of translating his crisp, vivid style.<\/p>\n
The author spins his tale swiftly, but the search for Elin comes off as a low-stakes mental exercise that generates little sense of urgency. What tension there is comes from a few short sections in which Helgi\u2019s violent ex, Bergthora, stalks Anita.<\/p>\n
In the end, Helgi appears to learn Elin\u2019s fate, but J\u00f3nasson leaves doubt that the case has actually been resolved. This time, however, one cliff-hanger isn\u2019t enough. J\u00f3nasson has Helgi ponder whether he should look into why Hulda vanished, and he leaves Anita lying injured (or is she dead?) in the street. For answers, readers must await the third novel in the Helgi series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer\u201d by Ragnar Jonasson. Minotaur via AP When we last saw…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":175982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1578,1022,3974,171,1084,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-175981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-associated-press","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-content-providers","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-literature","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115092955605315865","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}