Arnaldur Indridason - Hypothermia

review by showhost
I often have a look at the site ‘lovereading.co.uk’ which allows you to download or read an extract from a book before you buy it as they say ‘you wouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a test drive’. If I had I may have bought the book Hypothermia as the opening chapter drew me in but I’m not sure how much I enjoyed it. It had troughs of good then indifferent.
This is another murder mystery from Iceland. There are a lot of Icelandic place names but its best to just skip through them as it doesn’t detract from the main story.
Maria is found hanging from a beam in her holiday cottage. Suicide. She had been depressed over the death of first her father then her mother.
Maria’s friend finds a taped consultation with a ‘medium’, Maria wanted to believe in life in the hereafter and was searching for word from her parents that there was an afterlife. The tape puts a question mark over the ‘suicide’ verdict. Maria’s friend takes this recording to Erlendur. He begins his own private investigation to try to find out the truth. He is also looking into the disappearance of two young people around the Icelandic lakes; Plus he is haunted by the death of his own brother in a blizzard when they were younger.
It’s a slow read and the ending began to become pretty obvious. It’s not exciting, nail biting stuff, it plods rather than runs. In fact towards the end the main character ‘Erlendur’ begins to remind me of ‘Columbo’ the way he would just turn up at the suspects door with ‘just another question’.
It isn’t a book that will stay with me and I am glad that I have finished it so that I can go on to another read.