Night Shadows by Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir

I would like to thank Anne from Random Things Tours and Orenda Books for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Orenda Books

Published – 21st July

Price – £9.99 paperback £4.27 Kindle eBook

The small community of Akranes is devastated when a young man dies in a mysterious house fire, and when Detective Elma and her colleagues from West Iceland CID discover the fire was arson, they become embroiled in an increasingly perplexing case involving multiple suspects. What’s more, the dead man’s final online search raises fears that they could be investigating not one murder, but two.

A few months before the fire, a young Dutch woman takes a job as an au pair in Iceland, desperate to make a new life for herself after the death of her father. But the seemingly perfect family who employs her turns out to have problems of its own and she soon discovers she is running out of people to turn to.

As the police begin to home in on the truth, Elma, already struggling to come to terms with a life-changing event, finds herself in mortal danger as it becomes clear that someone has secrets they’ll do anything to hide…

If a thriller is watching the way the dominos fall to a massive crescendo a crim novel is often trying to unpick the mess on the floor and find out who pushed the first one. Some crimes are ruthlessly simple but more often it’s a tumult of events that leads to people making the decision to take a life or protect their own secrets, In Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir’s Night Shadows (translated very effectively by Victoria Cribb) a fire leads to the discovery of a murder and a nest of terrible secrets all hidden in Icelandic suburbia.

In the town of Akranes the neighbours are awakened by the sound of a fire in the modern house of wealthy family who made a killing in the financial crash of 2008 to various people’s suspicions and grudges. The fire brigade though soon find there was only one victim; the teenage son Marino found in bed burned but without any sign he had noticed the fire that started in his own bedroom. It is soon discovered that he was murdered prior to the fire Investigators Elma and Saevar are assigned and soon as well as the parent’s business dealing attention turns to Marino’s teenage friends and the families linked to them. A web of lies, betrayals and death is slowly uncovered that will shatter this small group.

This tale has a wonderfully complex tangle of small dramas that resulted in the terrible events that start the book and get worse as Elma unpicks the cover-ups as to why Marino died. On the face of it we have wealthy families of financiers, councillors, and teenagers on the cusp of adulthood who are dreaming of being musicians, footballers or even happily married. Yet under the gloss Aegisdottir shows a grubbier side of unhappy relationships, adultery, depression; and slowly bubbling anger that starts to swallow characters whole.

I was very impressed how these people who all looked happy and constantly enjoying themselves were all lying to others and to themselves about how their lives had changed so much. What the reader realises is that all these festering secrets will all collide and innocent lives have got caught up in the mess and Elma discovers a young au pair gets far too deep into the situation making things even worse. Everyone has a dark side that in this book has ramifications. The happy father who womanises all the time; the depressed superstar who can’t escape his family and people who will do anything just to feel loved and not alone. Cleverly we have in the police investigators an assortment of characters who slowly and quietly assemble the truth but who we discover all have their own secrets and dramas yet their approach to them is far more constructive with people dealing more honestly with one another and strangely mirrors the plot that Elma has to solve.

I’m being deliberately careful here not to give too much away in his story because very quickly we meet all the key players and start to see their real lives. What I can say is the atmosphere gets darker and we realise exactly how far everyone has gone to protect their own illusions of a happy life. Here selfishness wins and destroys so many lives. The kind patient and human Elma puts it all together but don’t expect to feel happy that justice is finally delivered too many have been hurt in the run up.

More an Icelandic Tragedy than a police procedural this is a well told tale where the reader sees the cars about to crash and cannot take their eyes away. By the end the gloss has fallen away and everyone can see the mould and rot left behind. A fine summer read that will send a shiver down your spine.