Skip to main content

Mystery review: Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

Icelandic title: Þriðja táknið (literally: The Third Symbol)
Genre: Mystery
Year of publication: 2005
No. in series: 1
Series detective: Þóra Guðmundsdóttir
Type of investigator: Lawyer
Setting & time: Reykjavík (mostly), Iceland; contemporary

Story:
Icelandic Lawyer Þóra (Thora in English) is hired by the parents of a German history student who was found murdered in the offices of the history department of the University of Iceland. They want her to help Matthew, an investigator they have sent over from Germany, to find out why their son was murdered and why his body was mutilated. Since they are not convinced that the suspect the police have arrested is guilty, they also want Þóra and Matthew to find the real killer.

The victim had been researching and comparing the history of witch hunts in Germany and Iceland and was the leader of a clique that practiced magic rituals. The mutilation of his body is connected to a magic spell found in an old grimoire, so it would seem logical that he was killed in connection with the practice of black magic, but there may have been a more logical reason behind it.

Review and rating:
I must admit that I had made two aborted attempts to read this book before I finally did finish it. In both cases I didn’t get beyond chapter two because I didn’t like the writing style. Not that’s its bad or clumsy or anything like that – it is in fact quite smooth, but the tone irritated me. However, it seems that Yrsa’s writing style is a bit like that used by Elizabeth Peters in her Amelia Peabody books: grating at first (although for different reasons), but once the story pulls you in it stops being annoying.

The characters of Þóra and Matthew are well-developed. Less well-developed are the characters of the members of the clique they have to deal with to find important information about the lead-up to the young man’s death, and most of the minor characters (with the exception of Þóra’s teenage son) are either stereotypes (e.g. the secretary) or simply flat. Þóra starts out as not a very likeable person: uptight, insecure, defensive and often rude; but she slowly gets more likeable as one begins to understand her better. There is an interesting balancing of power between her and Matthew. He is a friend and employee of the victim’s family, knows more than Þóra does about the case and has experience with this kind of investigation (it is hinted that he is an ex-police detective), but Þóra holds her own because she speaks both languages, knows the culture and the local laws and is good at reading people. Unusually for a detective story, her personal problems (single mother of two kids, broke after a divorce, a struggling law practice, a bitchy secretary) are actually interesting, because while they have little or no bearing on the mystery, they lighten up the dark and rather creepy story, and Yrsa is careful never to let them overpower the main plot.

The best part of the story is the plotting. The narrative is fast-paced and the twists and turns of the investigation keep the reader guessing right until the final twist. All in all, this is quite a good mystery. 3+ stars.
--
P.S.
I have a second book by Yrsa lined up and should have a review ready later this month.

Comments

Dorte H said…
For some reason my library seems to have missed this author. Perhaps I should tell them I´d like to try out her books? :)
It might even work; they are extremely service-minded, and sometimes the head librarian hands me a new crime novel she thinks I might be interested in.
Bibliophile said…
Dorte, I think asking the library to buy it would be a good idea. It has been published in Danish as Det tredje tegn. Here is a review in Danish: http://www.bogrummet.dk/ind.asp?VisAnm=999

The second book (which I have just finished reading and will review soon) has also been published in Danish, as Den der graver en grav.

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

First book of 2020: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach (reading notes)

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I loathe movie tie-in book covers because I feel they are (often) trying to tell me how I should see the characters in the book. The edition of Deborah Moggach's These Foolish Things that I read takes it one step further and changes the title of the book into the title of the film version as well as having photos of the ensemble cast on the cover. Fortunately it has been a long while since I watched the movie, so I couldn't even remember who played whom in the film, and I think it's perfectly understandable to try to cash in on the movie's success by rebranding the book. Even with a few years between watching the film and reading the book, I could see that the story had been altered, e.g. by having the Marigold Hotel's owner/manager be single and having a romance, instead being of unhappily married to an (understandably, I thought) shrewish wife. It also conflates Sonny, the wheeler dealer behind the retireme