Neither hot nor cold.

Big disappointment for this episode of the series, by an author I liked all of the above. I wondered what was wrong, because I felt something in the very principle of thriller, wrong. To clear my head so I went to look up the definition of the detective novel:
"The detective genre has six invariants: the crime or offense, the mobile, the offender, the victim, the procedure and investigation. "
Bingo: Indridason did not write a detective novel.
Just because it lacks one of the elements mentioned above.
I will not tell you which course. I let you discover the fault.
Something else bothered me. The author wants to give some volume by writing for the first time a social novel as the Anglo-Saxon know so well in the black novels. Unfortunately it did not for now this talent there.
The problem comes mainly from narration. The starting point is simple: a Thai mixed-blood boy is murdered near his building.
The author therefore wants to take advantage of the investigation to discuss the issue of racism in Iceland and immigration in particular. Beautiful intention, but awkwardly handled. Let us not forget that this is a novel, and what is more of a detective novel. Instead of showing us his characters live face the reality of evil that wants to denounce, he just summarize an aside a brief history of racism in Iceland, or just to tell some characters they don ' have never liked foreigners (you speak a track!) without it exceeds the level of a notice quite commonplace in other words, the cliché.
The result is an atmosphere where we do not feel any particular pressure, because we do not clear where the danger could come.
LUDI.