Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indriðason

Bone by bone, the body is unearthed, and the brutalizing history of a family who lived near the building site comes to light along with it. Inspector Erlendur returns in this gripping Icelandic thriller When a skeleton is discovered half-buried in a construction site outside of Reykjavík, Inspector Erlendur finds himself knee-deep in both a crime scene and an archeological dig. Silence of the Grave (Inspector Erlendur #4), Arnaldur Indriðason All of the Erlendur books have been translated into English.

The author (1961-) has written two dozen books, 11 of them in the Detective Erlendur series. I wish the author had not given us five character names beginning with “E” to deal with, especially two of the detectives, Elinborg and Elendur – a bit confusing at first. There’s some local color of Iceland (the book is translated from the Icelandic) and two maps at the front of the book.

You have to have a strong stomach for some of it.Īnd near the end a surprise: there are two skeletons in the grave.Ī good read that kept my interest to the end. He has a wife and two boys and the story to some extent becomes a catalog of the physical, verbal and psychological abuse he inflicts on his wife and boys. One of the detectives is female so we have the usual gender tension between her and the older man.Ī major focus of the story goes back fifty years to the daily life of the man working at the air base. We learn a bit about the private lives of the three detectives, most notably an older man who has a drug-addicted daughter, and we follow his travails with her. They come up with four people ranging from an Icelandic man who worked at the American Air Force base during WW II to a female who may or may not have thrown herself over a cliff during a love affair. Initially we don’t even know if it is a male or female skeleton but we do know it’s been in the ground for 50 or 60 years.įortunately Iceland has a low murder rate and three detectives with time on their hands so they immediately start investigating all disappearances 50 years ago in that area. The excavation of the skeleton is turned over to a crew from the university: a professor and some anthropology students. We get right into it with the first sentence “He knew at once it was a human bone, when he took it from the baby who was sitting on the floor chewing it.”Ī skeleton is uncovered at a construction site for a new housing development outside of Reykjavik.

Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indriðason