Fresh from maternity leave, Detective Elma finds herself confronted with a complex case, when a man is found murdered in a holiday cottage in the depths of the Icelandic countryside – the victim of a frenzied knife attack, with a shocking message scrawled on the wall above him.
At home with their baby daughter, Sævar is finding it hard to let go of work, until the chance discovery in a discarded box provides him with a distraction. Could the diary of a young boy, detailing the events of a long-ago summer have a bearing on Elma’s case?
Once again, the team at West Iceland CID have to contend with local secrets in the small town of Akranes, where someone has a vested interest in preventing the truth from coming to light. And Sævar has secrets of his own that threaten to destroy his and Elma’s newfound happiness.
Tense, twisty and shocking, Boys Who Hurt is the next, addictive instalment in the award-winning Forbidden Iceland series, as dark events from the past endanger everything…
This is the fifth book in Eva Björg Ægisdóttir's Forbidden Iceland series, including last year's prequel novel, You Can't See Me and I look forward to each new instalment with eager anticipation. There is nothing more enjoyable than settling down to a read, knowing I have a finely crafted mystery thriller to enjoy – and a book by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir guarantees exactly that.
It's not necessary to have read the previous books in the series but I would urge you to do so; each novel is an absolute treat, of course, but the ongoing development of the returning characters is such a delight. The series predominantly follows Elma, a detective with the West Iceland police, and she has become one of my favourite characters in crime fiction. She has undergone some significant changes since she first returned to Akranes but she has remained an authentic, relatable figure throughout. She is now mother to a seven-month old daughter and has recently moved in with her partner, fellow detective, Sævar who is on paternity leave while she returns to work. She certainly isn't eased back into the job, however, and the discovery of a man who has been brutally stabbed to death is just the start of a perplexing, harrowing investigation.
The novel opens with a prologue featuring a couple who sit down in 1995 to watch a video tape. Quite what appears on their screen isn't revealed at this point but it is soon obvious that it's something so horrible, the woman cannot bear to watch any further. Twenty-five years later, a frenzied stabbing in a holiday cottage will eventually lead Elma and her colleagues to determine the reason for his murder and the awful truth about the events from long ago.
How they are connected isn't so straightforward and Eva Björg Ægisdóttir constructs an intricate, intelligent and multilayered mystery which is darkly poignant and utterly compulsive. Alongside the main narrative, there are chapters which follow the murdered man, Thorgeir in the weeks leading up to his death. It quickly becomes apparent that he's a complicated man with a murky past and it's intriguingly difficult to know how much sympathy we should feel for him, knowing his fate. This is one of the most impressive aspects of Eva Björg Ægisdóttir's writing; she creates these morally ambiguous characters who are both victims and perpetrators. As it becomes clear that the killer isn't finished yet, Elma must gradually piece together the tragic evidence, both to identify their motive and attempt to prevent any further deaths.
Although on leave, and ostensibly looking forward to a break from the relentless grind of police work, Sævar can't resist becoming involved in the case when he makes a chance discovery looking through an old diary left in a box. It's to Eva Björg Ægisdóttir's credit that she makes these coincidences feel entirely plausible; Akranes is a small town and so of course, people will make discoveries about former inhabitants of their houses, their neighbours or faces from their past. Elma's boss, Hörður has also experienced some major changes in his life since the series began but in contrast to Elma and Sævar's joy, he is grieving the loss of his beloved wife and he suffers both mental and physical pain here. Despite his dark mood, he is a beautifully observed, sympathetic character and the subplot which finds him uncovering an unlikely criminal is cleverly linked to the main investigation.
With its atmospheric sense of place and tense, propulsive storyline, Boys Who Hurt is an exceptional darkly suspenseful thriller which delves into the chilling, shameful secrets behind even apparently respectable front doors. It would be remiss of me not to also compliment Victoria Cribb for her fine translation which as ever ensures the narrative flow is impeccably natural throughout. Another engrossingly intense, emotive read by the supremely talented Eva Björg Ægisdóttir; I very highly recommend it!
Boys Who Hurt will be published by Orenda Books on 20th June and can be pre-ordered from the publisher's website. Further purchasing links can be found here.
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