Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good - but not his best, 1 Sep 2007
I first discovered this author when he won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger a couple of years ago. Since then I've read all his books that have been translated into English and this is my least favourite. The action swings between modern Iceland and 1950s Leipzig where students from Iceland and the Eastern Bloc countries who have shown sufficient zeal for the party line (or may simply be useful to it in the future)are given sponsored university places. Once there, however, some of them realise that Eastern Germany is not the socialist paradise they've been led to believe. In the meantime, in modern day Iceland a body has been discovered in a draining lake. This isn't a bad book - the police personnel are as interesting as ever - but once you've gone past the student-who-knows-all-the-answers-to-the-world's-problems stage yourself, it's hard to care about such characters. I just didn't like any of the students in Leipzig enough to care what happened to them.
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Arnaldur Indridason - The Draining Lake, 12 Sep 2007
Brilliant, this. Indridason's style here is simply amazing, blending supremember intelligece with sensitivity and subtlety. His prose is so clear, but so balanced, poetic in that unflashy way that the very best poetry has, only very occasionally sparking with a lyrical sentence or an unexpected piercing insight. It is a joy to just read the prose, let alone follow the story, and that is excellent as well. It feels more "important" than Voices, but is just as gripping and mysterious. As in novels before, Indridason's unveils things gradually, allowing the reader a sense that they know what is going on, but in the end they don't fully, and that is where the power comes from. It reminds me of how Rendell writing as Barbara Vine goes about things, hinting and allowing educated guesses but always holding something vital back, and comparison to Rendell is possibly the highest complement I can accord. The Draining Lake is Indridason's best achievement so far, a gripping novel that's easy and inspiring to read, the kind of novel which makes the business of writing look easy while concealing how much sweat, graft, and craft went into the whole process. Excellent insights harking back to the cold war sensibilities, a revising of that kind of novel, the whole thing is excellent from beginning to end. This is the kind of novel which shows why translated novels won the Gold Dagger in 3 out of 4 years: when other countries produce novels like this, unless they raise their game most British crime novelists don't stand a chance.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Old sins, 3 Oct 2007
Another story featuring the detective who has a penchant for looking for missing people, his own brother having been lost in a snowstorm when they were children.
The themes of love and betrayal recur in the novel, not least with Erlendur's own messy personal life. To be honest I was almost put off by the blurb which mentioned espionage but I thought there was enough depth and plain human interest in the Leipzig flashbacks to sustain interest.
Without spoiling it for someone who hasn't read it, the mystery surrounding Leopold kept me guessing. The dogged investigator's efforts finally pay off. If only he could sort out his own life as efficiently.
It certainly makes a change to have a novel set mostly in Iceland; the author slyly suggests that for a foreign diplomat, to be sent to Iceland was considered a dire punishment.
Would like to add, I think the translator deserves a pat on the back for taut, descriptive prose.
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