In the city of Leipzig in East Germany, a group of young, radical Icelanders have gone to study at the University there. We follow some of them, in particular a young man named Tomas. The group of Icelanders expected to meet a communist paradise, but encountered instead a society where the secret police, Stasi, is present everywhere; where people are scared; and everybody spies on everybody else. And young Tomas meets repression, but also his first love.

In Iceland, 40 years later, a lake is draining out and a skeleton becomes visible. The scull has a hole and the skeleton has been tied to a radio transmitter, as it turns out – a Russian short wave transmitter. Detective Erlendur Sveinsson and his colleagues are summoned to investigate.

There is hardly any evidence to go by. Who is the man? How did he end up in the lake? Erlendur, who knows nothing about the students in Leipzig, works from the assumption that the man has been reported missing. For personal reasons, Erlendur is obsessed with disappearances and missing persons. This obsession comes in handy in this case, where persistence and intuition are the only real assets for the police.

The Draining Lake is a wonderful police procedural. Arnaldur Indridason’s descriptions of the tedious work of the police, the characters in the book, and – in particular – of the somewhat mellow and slightly depressed Erlendur, are masterful. It is an intelligent, very written crime book, written by one of the very best of Scandinavian crime authors. I do not hesitate to recommend it!

(See more reviews of books by Arnaldur Indridason in Norwegian, see also the section on Scandinavian crime books, including the author pages on Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson at ScandinavianBooks.)

Order books by Indridason from amazon US. You can also order Arnaldur Indridason’s The Draining Lake from amazon UK.

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