by Arnaldur Indridason & translated by Bernard Scudder ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2007
Another top-notch mystery from Indridason (Silence of the Grave, 2006, etc.), its lyrical melancholy matched by the depth of...
Who killed Santa Claus?
Reykjavík police inspector Erlendur, with sidekicks Sigurdur Óli and Elinborg, is summoned to a posh hotel to investigate the murder of Gudlaugur Egilsson, found stabbed in his modest basement digs with a condom hanging from his “ditty.” Saliva samples are taken of guests and employees, none of whom admits personally knowing the 50-ish doorman/handyman. But the hotel manager sheepishly acknowledges that he’d just fired Gudlaugur, apparently leaving him with no other prospects. A little digging reveals a remarkable story. Gudlaugur was a boy soprano with a brief but spectacular career. Indeed, hotel guest Henry Wapshott had come all the way from England to meet him. Talking to Gudlaugur’s estranged father and sister and his old choirmaster Gabríel fills in many details of Gudlaugur’s fall from fame, which involved an embarrassing public performance and a subsequent battle with his father so fierce that it left the old man confined to a wheelchair. The case affects Erlendur strangely. Suddenly very tired, he takes a room at the hotel, has obsessive thoughts about his broken family (in a hilarious scene, his drug-addicted daughter Eva Lind, visiting him in his room, is mistaken by hotel staff for a prostitute) and edges toward an affair with Valgerdur, an attractive crime-scene technician.
Another top-notch mystery from Indridason (Silence of the Grave, 2006, etc.), its lyrical melancholy matched by the depth of its characterizations.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-35871-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
Share your opinion of this book
More by Arnaldur Indridason
BOOK REVIEW
by Arnaldur Indridason ; translated by Philip Roughton
BOOK REVIEW
by Arnaldur Indridason ; translated by Victoria Cribb
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
Awards & Accolades
Likes
29
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.A. Jance
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance
by Patricia Cornwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2007
Proceed at your own risk.
Pioneering pathologist Kay Scarpetta (Trace, 2004, etc.) goes up against a wraithlike killer whose self-appointed mission is to “relieve others of their suffering.”
Practice, practice, practice. If only 16-year-old South Carolina tennis phenom Drew Martin had stuck to the court instead of going off to Rome to party, her tortured corpse wouldn’t be baffling the Italian authorities, headed inexplicably by medico legale Capt. Ottorino Poma, and the International Investigative Response team, which includes both Scarpetta and her lover, forensic psychologist Benton Wesley. But the young woman’s murder and the gruesome forensic riddles it poses are something of a sideshow to the main event: the obligatory maundering of the continuing cast. Wesley still won’t leave Boston for the woman he tepidly insists he loves. Scarpetta’s niece, computer whiz Lucy Farinelli, continues to be jealously protective of her aunt. Scarpetta’s investigator, Pete Marino, is so besotted by the trailer-trash pickup who’s pushing his buttons that he does some terrible things. And Scarpetta herself is threatened by every misfit in the known universe, from a disgruntled mortician to oracular TV shrink Marilyn Self. Cornwell’s trademark forensics have long since been matched by Karin Slaughter and CSI. What’s most distinctive about this venerable franchise is the kitchen-sink plotting; the soap-opera melodrama that prevents any given volume from coming to a satisfying end; and the emphasis on titanic battles between Scarpetta and a series of Antichrists.
Proceed at your own risk.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-399-15393-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.