Arnaldur Indridason's Arctic Chill – Review
Detective Erlendur Returns – Bleak, Driven and Unforgettable
A young immigrant boy is found dead and frozen to the ground outside a grim block of flats, his schoolbag still on his back. He wears camouflage trousers, one of his boots has come off and his sock has a hole in it.
It's a pathetic scene. The detectives, Erlendur and his female colleague, ElÍnborg, are horrified.
Staring at the victim, Erlendur says, 'Why do they make military trousers like that for children?' Which sums up his incomprehension of what has happened.
Gang Murder or Racist Attack?
Was the Thai boy, who lived with his mum and brother, the victim of a racist attack? Could a suspected paedophile be responsible? Was it a fight between school gangs?
The reader is pitched into a disturbing, grinding investigation that unravels Iceland's image of stunning landscapes, low crime and civil people. This is the reality of barely hidden racism, indifference and poverty.
Knocking on its victims' doors is, as usual, Erlendur. He is a smoking, unfashionably dressed, solitary detective whose idea of leisure is to read folktales about travellers killed in blizzards. This is a man whose ex-wife loathes him, who is a stranger to his drug- and drink-damaged adult children, and has never been known to crack a joke. His obsessions make him an effective cop; his emotional hangups give him a disastrous personality.
Depressed Loner Who Still Attracts a Growing Fan Base
So what makes this depressed loner one of the most compelling characters in contemporary crime fiction?
He is portrayed precisely and lovingly by Indridason in snow-crisp, tight prose (here translated by Bernard Scudder and Victoria Cribb). Erlendur is a tragic but profoundly decent man. He makes mistakes, has doubts. He regrets his failures over his children but is incapable of soothing his ties with them.
Arctic Chill develops his grating relationships with the cookery writer and detective ElÍnborg and his more racy, younger colleague Sigurdur Óli. He also has to deal with the death of his abrasive mentor Marion Briem.
Brother Lost in a Blizzard
And resonating throughout is the mystery of his eight-year-old brother's disappearance in a blizzard when Erlendur was a child. Having lost his sibling's grip in the storm, Erlendur blames himself for the tragedy. His guilt fuels his obsession with resolving missing-people cases and with the Thai boy's death. Returning to his flat at night, he sits in an unlit room and stares out the window.
Again, his moments of comfort come in his cautious relationship with Valgerdur, the woman who is divorcing her unpleasant husband. Though being Erlendur, he of course has to choose someone who works hours as unsocial as his own so that their relationship is largely conducted by phone.
Arctic Chill has its climax in a snow storm and the title is a lyrical one, the cold symbolising the alienating forces in this world. When the storm hits, 'the city lay lifeless, as if in the grip of a plague'.
Emotional Force
This is a strong novel from Indridason, having an emotional force rare in crime fiction. Erlendur is a protagonist with a ring of truth, surrounded by the everyday dramas of small lives. Elías, the murdered boy, is no cardboard victim on which to swing the plot, but a figure of achievements and dreams whose death conveys a sense of loss to the reader.
Arctic Chill makes 2008 a good year for Indridason's profile in the UK, following the paperback translation of The Draining Lake and release of Baltasar Kormakur's film Jar City (based on Indridason's Erlendur novel, Tainted Blood).
Order Arctic Chill on Harvill Secker
Arctic Chill
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