“Do you know the average number of murders in Iceland per annum?” I was asked this question by the undisputed queen of Icelandic crime fiction, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. “It’s very low,” she continued, “Perhaps two or three a year — and despite a spike in 2024, we appear to be back at our very low average.”
Yrsa, as international readers who struggle with her surname call her, has been obliged to up the ante for the fictional homicides in her books for more than two decades (Nordic noir aficionados regard a high body count as de rigueur). Her work eschews the Bergman-like introspection of some of her colleagues and sports a grim exuberance, along with a gruesomeness that demonstrates her affection for horror fiction.
Her latest, the flesh-creeping The Depths (Hodder & Stoughton £22), is the third in her recent Black Ice sequence, and is graced with an impeccable translation by her usual collaborator Victoria Cribb. A skull is exhumed in Reykjavik. As a result, detectives Týr and Karó are faced with a local dispute that turns lethal, while the cook on a fishing ship starts to fear that someone onboard wants her dead. All of Yrsa’s command of mounting suspense is in play here, consolidating her pole position at the top of the Scandicrime genre.
Those seeking crime fiction set in unfamiliar locales and featuring protagonists from somewhere other than rain-washed city streets should pay attention to David Heska Wanbli Weiden, who, as well as a novelist, is also professor of Native American studies and political science, and is an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation. Wisdom Corner (Simon & Schuster £20/Ecco $30), like the author’s superlative Winter Counts, takes on much more than the simple imperative of keeping the pages turning (although he performs that duty with aplomb); this is also a rich picture of Native American identity today.
Virgil Wounded Horse is not a typical hero; he is a violent man with a bloody past as a paid enforcer on the Rosebud Reservation. Trying to discover who murdered his medicine man friend, he comes up against a native gang attempting a takeover of the reservation’s alcohol supply as well as a crooked politician involved in a parlous local election. This is immensely vivid stuff, with much of the pungency of such writers as Cormac McCarthy.
Equally unsparing is The Kingpin by AA Dhand (HQ £16.99), with the author’s territory of gangland Leeds. The compromised anti-hero Idris Khan is a successful pharmacist in Leeds but falls deep into corruption when his estranged brother Zidane suggests that he take over the drug trafficking network in both Leeds and Bradford and they run it together. It’s a sprawling vision of criminality on the mean streets of West Yorkshire and bracingly astringent fare.
Narrative pacing is one of the hardest arts to master, but it’s long been second nature to Erin Kelly, as The Night Stairs (Harvill £16.99) once again proves. The venerable institution of St Cordula’s School is facing ruin. Legend has it that it has been sustained by the words “GOD FORGIVE ME” inscribed by a 15th-century nun in the chapel, and the inscription must be renewed every year. But a kind of mass hysteria is gripping the pupils, and the girls begin to fall to their death on the eponymous stairs. With three troubled protagonists in play, this is a weighty read at more than 400 pages, but it justifies its length.
Something of a change of pace for the Irish thriller maestro David Fennell. All Killers Aboard (Orion £20) is markedly more playful than his excellent DI Grace Archer series; the new book is set on a luxury cruise from Southampton to New York, with wine being enthusiastically quaffed by the enigmatic Midnight Chorus Society. But what the ship’s other passengers don’t know is that the society is composed of serial killers, both professional and aspirational, along with their devotees. This is deliciously sardonic entertainment, delivered with considerable panache.
Philip Gwynne Jones may live in the aquatic city of Venice but he was born in south Wales, and such books as The Venetian Redemption (Constable £22) have a piquant mixture of sensibilities: Welsh seriousness married to rococo Italian flourishes. Venice is celebrating the Redentore festival, but British Consul Nathan Sutherland, in the city with his wife Federica, finds himself the victim of aconite poisoning. Who wants him dead?
Finally, books from two more prodigally talented British writers: Kate Rhodes’ The Mermaid’s Cry (Orenda £9.99) and Sarah Pinborough’s They Say a Girl Died Here (Orion £22/Pine & Cedar $28.99). Rhodes’ latest is not one of her assiduously detailed Scilly Isles mysteries; this one has DI Ben Kitto dealing with an attempted child murder in Cornwall. Pinborough, meanwhile, delivers a customarily unorthodox investigation into a convoluted mystery of the past, with her usual flair for the killer twist.
Barry Forshaw is the author of ‘Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide’
