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House Of Evidence (1998)

by Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson(Favorite Author)

3.47 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1611090997 (ISBN13: 9781611090994)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

AmazonCrossing

review 1: This is so much more what I was looking for from this author when I picked up his more recent novel, Daybreak. This novel, set in the early 1970's, includes long excerpts from a series of fictitious diaries from the late twenties through WWII. I learned more of the rough history of Iceland, including the vote to become a republic instead of a kingdom, in the course of this one mystery novel than I managed to piece together from seventeen years in the American public school and university system. Iceland has always been a vague place to me, warped on the maps of my childhood into a large, strange island shrouded in snow, misinformation, and Bjork's music. This novel shows a small group of Icelandic people living their lives and investigating not one murder but two alon... moreg the way. At one point I reacted a little roughly to a strain of homophobia that ran through the novel, but rest assured, that is the opinion of a few individual characters, not of the novel (or the novelist) and provides an interesting depth to the story. These characters are real people. They have opinions, they make mistakes -- some of them unforgivable -- and they live their lives. The mystery is interesting; the look at Iceland in the seventies and a further look into Iceland leading into WWII is invaluable to an ethnocentric American such as myself. There is another book available in translation from this author -- I'm headed out to secure it now.
review 2: Love mysteries in Iceland! A father and son killed in the same way, in the same room of their house, 28 years apart. The father had kept diaries of his life up to his death in 1945. The author vacillates between excerpts from the diaries and the year of 1973 when the son was found murdered. The diaries help solve the two murders. The characters are likable and believable. The father was schooled in Denmark and Berlin as an engineer, and became fanatical about Europe's rail system believing Iceland needed one. He began in earnest to get the Icelandic government to finance and approve a railway system in Iceland. Then WWII halted this plan. After the father's death in 1945, his son became a loner and wanted to turn the family home into a museum. The son was trying to get funding for the museum from the Icelandic govt. This plan failed as well. Then the death of the son happens. A brother, Matthias, who was sent to Germany before WWII and stayed there since, appears in Iceland to attend his brother's funeral. That brings about more questions of why his father banned him to Germany never to return to Iceland. Murders, plots and subplots all intertwine and come together in the end. Enjoyable read. less

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