- Hardcover: 346 pages
- Publisher: William Morrow & Company; 1 edition (May 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0061143383
- ISBN-13: 978-0061143380
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 16.5 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,574,900 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
My Soul to Take
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
ICELANDIC MAYHEM and SECRETS and LIES,
By Berengaria "hazells" (Kent, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: My Soul to Take (Paperback)
Yrsa was an accomplished author with a number of children's books under her belt before she branched into crime writing and dared to be compared to the new crop of Icelandic/Scandinavian authors, Indridason et al. Although engaging and literate enough herself in English, a second language for her when seen at Crime Writing festivals (she studied in Canada for a while) I felt immediately that I would enjoy her previous book LAST RITUALS but unfortunately I found the victim and the rest of the protagonists in it hard to sympathise with. Then the descriptions relating to the medieval historical background of witchcraft and rituals seemed overly long and unnecessary tedious, so that although it fulfilled the criteria of being quirky and extremely dark I thought the plot rather difficult to swallow, so I admit it was with trepidation I reached for her second helping, hoping I'd been mistaken.
Luckily MY SOUL TO TAKE was much easier to read and funnier too, devoid of too much padding, with the characters seeming much more normal, if only a little on the odd side, and the settings were more interesting in the remote Icelandic country/ seaside location where a new resort has been built and where petty jealousies and long held secrets hide. I doubted how she was going to take Matthew through a further story after Book #1 but she does it with ease. I can now look forward to the 3rd.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A clever mixture of darkness and wit,
By
This review is from: My Soul to Take (Hardcover)
I suppose, being Icelandic, that it can be said the author comes from that school of Scandinavian writers who have blossomed in the world of crime writing in recent years. But she has a style which is her own, and should not be pigeonholed so simply. She is a writer of both children's books and crime fiction. This is her second crime novel, using her main character, lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir.
The story of My Soul to Take begins in 1945, and whatever happens in the present is influenced by those events. Thora finds herself contacted by an old friend and client called Jonas, who is setting up an holistic hotel on the site of two farms he has bought. He wants to know if he can get compensation for something not revealed at the sale - the fact that the site is haunted. Thora agrees to stay at the hotel to investigate, only to arrive just as the body of architect Birna is found on a remote beach. Before the police can begin to investigate closely, Thora searches Birna's room and finds her diary. The background to the murder clearly goes back a generation to the two brothers who owned the two farms on the site, one of whom has a connection with Nazism. There is also the mysterious Kristin, who with the help of her German ex-police officer friend Matthew, Thora tries to track down. But soon there is another death, and a dynasty of politicians who want to be kept clean, and matters get more and more confused. Thora's investigation is not helped by the fact that her precocious young son runs off with his pregnant girlfriend. The life of the fictional detective rarely runs smoothly. Yrsa's first book, Last Rituals, introduced the world to her lawyer and amateur detective Thora in a context of black magic and hocus-pocus. In this second book Thora has to tackle unpleasant family histories, and Nazism in wartime Iceland. What in both cases could have been a grisly tale, was handled with a lightness of touch due to the nature of Yrsa's protagonist. Thora is in no way a hard-boiled gumshoe, but can deal with unpleasant facts, and nasty deaths. The story pulls no punches, but does not wallow in grisly detail either. Neatly translated by Bernard Scudder and Anna Yates, this is a compelling read with a clever mixture of darkness and wit. There will be more to come. Ian Morson Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bit short of taking you totally.,
By
This review is from: My Soul to Take (Paperback)
I read and loved 'Last Rituals' so maybe my expectactions were too high for this one, but it did not grab me as the previous one. The opening is terrifying and leading to think we are in for a chilling journey. But soon we are taken instead to this 'new age' resort-hotel where we get to know some odd characters, including the hotel owner soon suspected of murdering the young female architect killed on the nearby beach. The lawyer-detective is his friend, so she agrees to stay and helps him clear his name. Then we get on this intricate, detailed saga into a complicated family inheritance and honestly at some point it rather lost me or I lost interest in the complex family links and past history. There is some further murder that tries hard to be horrifying but is not really. And overwhole I did not find the plot very interesting. What goes for this book is of course the great icelandic atmosphere and the quaintness of characters and settings, but is not quite enough to redeem its weakness. The German boyfriend is a very 'added-on' sidekick that does not in fact add anything genuine to the story but feels like a ploy to give the detective someone to talk to and to give her some colour throughout the story. Her own family problems also come on as totally unecessary and very superficial. Still it is a book I would not want to discourage anyone from reading, quite the opposite but one should not expect here the greatest crime story of the year !
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