It’s New Year and Iceland is still reeling from the effects of the financial crash when a notorious financier is found beaten to death after a high-profile reception at the President’s residence. The police are certain they have the killer - or do they? Determined to get to the truth, maverick lawyer Stella Blómkvist isn’t so sure.
A stripper disappears from one of the city’s seediest nightspots, and nobody but Stella seems interested in finding her. A drug mule cooling his heels in a prison cell refuses to speak to anyone but Stella - although she has never heard of him. An old man makes a deathbed confession and request for Stella to find the family he lost long ago.
With a sharp tongue and a moral compass all of her own, Stella Blómkvist has a talent for attracting trouble and she’s as at home in the corridors of power as in the dark corners of Reykjavík’s underworld.
Stella Blómkvist delivers an explosive mix of murder, intrigue and surprise, and is one of Iceland's best-loved crime series.
It's my pleasure to be hosting the blog tour for Murder at the Residence today. Many thanks to Corylus Books for inviting me and for my advance digital copy of the novel.
The mystery of Stella Blómkvist's identity has intrigued Icelandic readers for many years; now, with Murder at the Residence being the first book in the long-running series to be translated into English, it's our turn to meet the character at the heart of the novels and to speculate who the author who shares her name really is. She's certainly an interesting protagonist and the first-person narrative ensures there's a real immediacy to the pleasingly complex plot.
The book opens on New Year's Eve in 2009 and there's a gritty earthiness to these early scenes as a drunk Stella looks for a hookup but is instead approached by a Latvian sex worker, Dagnila who asks for her help to find her missing friend. The globalised exploitation of sex workers is just one of the themes explored in Murder at the Residence and throughout the book, there's an often caustically honest portrayal of Iceland's issues. This was, of course, a period of extreme uncertainty and anger in the country following the devastating financial crash. Greed and corruption at the highest levels has resulted in ordinary people clamouring for change and while she doesn't become directly involved in the protests, it's clear that lawyer Stella sympathises with the political and social views of some of her clients.
She isn't averse to pushing boundaries and upsetting the authorities as well as criminals but her principles, resolute belief in justice and her obvious love for her daughter means she's a compelling, rather likeable character, and her pursuit of erotic pleasures only serves to make her even more fascinating. Her search for the missing young woman proves to be just one strand of the multilayered storyline and she also has to help an addict facing a murder charge, a drug mule avoid a long prison sentence far from home and an idealistic young woman who has had enough of the political landscape. Scandi Noir is renowned for its uncompromising examination of social issues and the juxtaposition between the addicts and sex workers she defends and the shady dealings in the corridors of power is particularly compulsive in Murder at the Residence. With Iceland being such a small country, the connections between some of her cases are more believable than perhaps they might have been in a different setting.
The translation by Quentin Bates is excellent and he captures both the darkness of the plot and the raw, biting wit of the dialogue. For the most part, I enjoyed Murder at the Residence and found it an engaging read, however, I have to admit that I found some of the narrative a little jarring, most notably the author's constant use of certain phrases such as referring to the police as the 'boys in black' or 'blackbirds' and her car as her 'silver steed'. Her repeated references to her mother's various sayings at the end of chapters became less amusing as the novel progressed too. I felt these repetitions were a little too noticeable and tended to pull me out of the story. Nevertheless, this is only a minor gripe and the intriguingly twisty mystery and forthright sense of time and place throughout means I have no hesitation in recommending this intelligent, atmospheric crime thriller.
Murder at the Residence is published by Corylus Books, purchasing links can be found here.
Follow the blog tour, details are below.
About the Author
The books have been published under a pseudonym that still hasn’t been cracked. The question of Stella Blómkvist’s identity is one that crops up regularly, but it looks like it’s going to remain a mystery…
About the Translator
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