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The Draining Lake
 
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The Draining Lake (Paperback)

by Arnaldur Indridason (Author), Bernard Scudder (Translator)
4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
RRP: £11.99
Price: £8.39 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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The Draining Lake + Voices + Arctic Chill
Price For All Three: £22.27

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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Harvill Secker (2 Aug 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1846550955
  • ISBN-13: 978-1846550959
  • Product Dimensions: 23 x 14.6 x 2.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 137,589 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

New Statesman
'Indridason skilfully hides the identity of both the victim and
the killer until the very end. More than this, though, he manages to make a
Cold War tale ring with contemporary relevance'

www.tangled-web.co.uk
`The Draining Lake is another remarkable Reykjavik Murder
Mystery... Arnaldur Indridason's best book yet.'


See all Product Description

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Draining Lake
63% buy the item featured on this page:
The Draining Lake 4.4 out of 5 stars (9)
£8.39
Silence of the Grave
12% buy
Silence of the Grave 3.9 out of 5 stars (12)
£4.28
Jar City
10% buy
Jar City 4.3 out of 5 stars (14)
£6.39
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
8% buy
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 4.1 out of 5 stars (171)
£3.99

 

Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
5 star:
 (5)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars INCISIVE BOOK, EXCELLENTLY TRANSLATED..., 8 Dec 2007
By Val De Beer "Val De Beer" - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This is the first Indridason book which I have read and I found it excellent.

The action moves back and forth from the finding of a skeleton in a draining lake to the lives of the detectives and then to the lives of the students in communist East Germany. By the time that the lake begins to fill again, many old tragedies have been exhumed and explored....

The characters are alive and the concerns and interests of the young students are explored in detail and we come to care about the experiences of Lothar, Emil, Hannes, Tomas and particularly Ilona whose story is the connecting thread which holds them all together (or splits them apart).

The detectives, Erlendur, Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli,are real people and friends:
"What's the book called?" Erlendur asked.
"'More than Just Desserts'" Elinborg said. "It's a pun. Justice - get it - and desserts, and it's not just desserts..."
"Very droll" Erlendur said, casting a look of astonishment at Sigurdur Oli, who was trying to smother his laughter.

They have their moments of fun and laughter but also their personal tragedies:
"Erlunder lay staring up into the darkness...He thought about his brother, for whom he had been searching in vain all these years. His bones were lying somewhere.
Perhaps deep in a fissure, or higher up in the mountains than he could ever imagine....
'Don't you ever get tired of all this?'
Tired of this endless search."

Of course, the search is a metaphor for Erlendur's search for meaning and also for his profession which entails a constant search.
In this case, to find the identity of the body with the hole in its skull and also for some reason for its death.

It is only at the end that it all becomes apparent and yet another case has been solved. But many other questions have been answered and relationships have been explored.

The late, much lamented Bernard Scudder has translated this book with a sensitive touch, maintaining the tone and essence of the story and conveying to us the effect of the cold, icy environment on young and old alike.

Do buy it, it's well worth reading...
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14 of 19 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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10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Arnaldur Indridason - The Draining Lake, 12 Sep 2007
By RachelWalker "RachelW" (England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
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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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Draining Lake
Have never read a scandinavian authors book before and I can heartly recommend this one. Good read
Published 1 month ago by Bjarting Lilnda

5.0 out of 5 stars 'unputdownable' (no, not a cliché)
I generally do not like intertwined story lines and flash-backs, and I hate the phrase 'unputdownable'. Read more
Published 2 months ago by C. Wildervanck

5.0 out of 5 stars A N INSIGHT OF ICELAND
Fasinating close to us yet ever so different the country is closed to us and so different,its history or part of it is revealed,the plot is ever so intrigate I couldn't put down. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Garcia Idalgo

4.0 out of 5 stars Draining to read
Set against the background of the Cold War, this novel uses the discovery of a skeleton in an Icelandic lake as the trigger for the investigation of a series of missing persons... Read more
Published 11 months ago by P. McAllister

4.0 out of 5 stars Dark
I am not a fan of Indridason's writing style, nor of the quality of the translation. His dialogues especially are stilted and dark, full of aggression, antagonism and rudeness... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Amsterdamned

4.0 out of 5 stars Old sins
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. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Ethel the Unready

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