The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer by Ragnar Jonasson
Updated: Sep 12
Mystery fans will love how this works on several levels. Jonasson continues characters from his Death at the Sanatorium, so readers will get a lot more by reading that first.
Acclaimed Icelandic mystery writer Elin S. Jonsdottir gives a journalist a personal interview as she publishes her latest crime novel, already a bestseller. After twenty years, this finishes her series of ten books. She has always written, before fame and after, for her own entertainment, and as she now retires in her seventies, she disappears without a trace. Her good friends—publisher Rut and her husband Thor, and her lawyer Lovina—have seen this before. Many years ago, she disappeared for a year. Perhaps Elin is taking time on her own.
Helgi Reykdal was solving the Death at the Sanatorium when he met his new girlfriend Anita and officially joined Reykjavik CID. An avid mystery reader with a home stacked with books, Helgi knows Elin's work. He is given Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir's old office after, on the eve of retirement, she mysteriously disappeared while investigating a historic cold case that captured the nation—a deadly robbery in 1965 by an unknown group. It was a time when even her colleagues resented Hulda, feeling a woman had no place in the CID. Helgi has split up with his violent alcoholic ex-wife Bergthora, but they are both bothered by her stalking, claiming Helgi is still her man. Her controlling and lying are becoming more vicious.
Readers will appreciate Helgi's affection for Golden Age Detective novels. As he reads Peril at End House, he references Agatha Christie's famously unsolved mysterious disappearance in 1926 and includes a reading list of Anthony Berkeley, S.S. Van Dine, John Dickson Carr, and other books on Helgi's shelf (including Icelandic translations of Christie actually written by Ragnar Jonasson himself). The mysterious Hulda will be familiar to readers of Jonasson's trilogy (The Darkness, The Island, and The Mist).
This is a superlative mystery that wraps several stories up with the love of books. Helgi is a competent and relatable detective and will land on his feet with the help of Anita and the shadow of Hulda hovering like a ghost in the background.
Excellent, and even better combined with Death at the Sanatorium.
2023 (translated 2025) / Hardcover / 314 pages
My other reviews for Ragnar Jonasson:
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