Product Description

One cold autumn night, a woman is found hanging from a beam in her summer cottage by Lake Thingvellir. At first sight it appears to be a straightforward case of suicide; the woman, Maria, had never recovered from the loss of her mother two years earlier and had a history of depression. But when Karen, the friend who found her body, approaches Erlendur and gives him the tape of a seance that Maria had attended, his curiosity is aroused. Driven by a need to find answers that even he does not fully understand, Erlendur embarks on an unofficial investigation to find out why the woman's life ended in such an abrupt and tragic manner. At the same time he is haunted by the unresolved cases of two young people who went missing thirty years before, and, inevitably, his discoveries raise ghosts from his own past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #408 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
"Our love affair with Scandinavian crime continues with the latest installment of Indridason's award-winning Icelandic murder mystery series."
--Daily Express

"...Indridason combines psychological acuteness with great stylistic economy and a pleasing place." --Independant

"...An insightful human story, beautifully written and translated..."
--Literary Review

"Descriptions of Iceland's stunning crystalline landscape are lyrical and the overall storyline thoughtful and original" --The Daily Mail

"an intelligent, gripping and moody tale with superior characterisation" --The Saturday Times

"Indridason's best novel so far" --Books Quarterly

"The narrative grips, the writing, excellently translated by Cribb, is resonant and Lyrical, and the atmosphere is chillingly creepy. Brrr" --Guardian

`a personal odyssey, suffused with a melancholy that, like the icy chill, seeps into the bones' --The Herald

`Hypothermia is one of the most haunting crime novels I've read in a long time' --Sunday Times

About the Author
ARNALDUR INDRIETHASON worked for many years as a journalist and critic before he began writing novels. Outside Iceland, he is best known for his crime novels featuring Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli, which are consistent bestsellers across Europe. The series has won numerous awards, including the Nordic Glass Key and the CWA Gold Dagger. His most recent novel is Arctic Chill.

Customer Reviews

Engaging throughout
This is the sixth novel featuring the brooding,
insular(he has never been outside Iceland),yet
fascinating Detective Erlandur.
The obsessive Maria is found hanging in her
holiday home.A seemingly clear case of suicide.
But all is quiet regarding official police work
for Erlandur,so he decides to go off on his own,
and satisfy himself concerning the circumstances
leading up to the suicide.This triggers Erlandur's
own obsession with 2 missing person cases from 30
years back,and with the disappearance of his brother
in a snow storm ,when the Detective was a child.This
has a bearing on Erlandur's current dysfunctional
family life.
This is not a conventional police procedural novel,
focusing ,as it does, a great deal on Erlandur,but it
is well written and engaging throughout.

Arnaldur Indridason - Hypothermia
Hypothermia is exceptional, an absolutely outstanding crime novel. Every year I forget just how good Indridason is, how intelligent a crime writer, how gently he stitches his plots together, and how superlatively moving his books are. Indridason consistently writes the saddiest, sorriest crime novels I've ever read. Nearly each one has scenes of such empathy and pathos that most readers would be hard pressed not to be moved to tears. Like Karin Fossum, he has a real sense of compassion for quite lives lived unexceptionally but ended tragically. I loved reading this book. It's intelligent, original, and knits different cases together, one of a disquieting suicide and two separate dissappearances from years ago, wonderfully. I would recommend that every fan of crime novels reads this book. Simply put, Indridason's a crime-writing genius.

The best Indridason so far....
Beautifully written, engrossing, the best Indridason so far. Hypothermia is not just the title, it's a theme woven right through the book. It's very well translated by Victoria Cribb: colloquial but without cliches. I loved it and now have a long wait for the reappearance of Erlendur............