“Icelandic murders are sordid, amateurish affairs. Committed under the influence of alcohol or drugs or in domestic situations” says one of the detectives in Boys Who Hurt, but in Eva Björg Ægisdóttir latest instalment of the Forbidden Iceland series, murders are much more meticulously planned.
In this, the fifth novel the murder of a man in a remote summerhouse sparks a journey that takes us back to his childhood and a series of events that spark crimes decades later. The summerhouse also features a large bloodstain soaked into the floorboards that seem to have also been there for decades – is there more than one crime to solve here?
For Detective Elma, freshly returned from maternity leave, and her team, the ripples of the past soon turn into waves as links to events a quarter of a century ago see the body count rising.
As is usual with Ægisdóttir’s intricately curated plots, however, the devil is in the detail. There are no huge shocks here, just a beautifully layered opportunity to discover more about the interrelationships that rock this overwise peaceful community.
And it is a community that Elma knows well, the mother of the initial victim her neighbour, an earlier crime partly covered up by her department, a swimming pool she uses now a crime scene. It all adds to draw the reader into a world we feel we know and are part of.
Ægisdóttir’s work always seems effortless, a simplicity of plot and narrative arc that belies the complexity underneath the surface. That duality extends even to the book’s title – are the ‘Boys Who Hurt’ bullies or have they been hurt, with past trauma now causing them to lash out? Ægisdóttir never judges, and never gives the reader the answers, instead allowing her deeply drawn characters to tell their own story.
As has become a trademark of her writing, Ægisdóttir draws us into the domestic as well as the dramatic, the struggles of detective Elma to manage motherhood and work, the physical strains this workplace on the detectives and the families around them a constant thread.
Victoria Cribb’s fluid translation makes for a very readable work that flows off the page into the brain and Ægisdóttir’stwists provide enough hooks to keep the pages turning.
Five books into a series plot can begin to suffer, but in Ægisdóttir’s hands, the Forbidden Iceland series goes from strength to strength and Boys Who Hurt is yet another sign that this is a writer at the peak of their craft.
Boys Who Hurt, written by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir and translated by Victoria Cribb, is out now published by Orenda Books.
