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: #196 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

The best crime writer working today?
Arnaldur Indridasson has for some time been among the cream of the explosion of crime and mystery writing currently emanating from the Nordic countries; A writer who eschews melodrama, keeps his cast of characters concise and tightly drawn and suffuses all of his writing with a slightly doleful understatement. His main character, Erlandur, superficially ticks all the boxes for the identikit modern fictional detective; middle-aged (check), unhappy family life (check), bit of a loner (check), dogged and brilliant (check) - in this respect for Erlandur read Wallander, Rebus, Banks etc. What differentiates Indridasson are the depth of his psychological insight and his willingness to stretch the conventional form into areas where lesser writers would not dare to go, working without the safety net of big plot, big action or supporting cast of big characters, but keeping the reader glued to the personalities involved and to the slow revealing of a complex and ultimately tragic story. This latest instalment has Erdlandur working on his own to resolve events that may or may not be crimes, but whose resolution will in any event have little direct impact on anyone alive. That resolution is as much about recovering and honouring the memory of the lost, as it is about exposing the actions of the guilty. Indridasson is by nature a sparse writer, there is little embellishment and the "octane level" is kept rather low - but his mastery of pace and narrative fluency are simply unrivalled (contrast him with the much hyped, highly enjoyable but infinitely more frenetic and long-winded Stieg Larsson). I've long felt that Indridasson is among the very best crime writers working in Europe; for me Hypothermia elevates him onto a different literary level. Highly recommended

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.

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.