If you would like to take a trip to Iceland but do not want to deal with the long travel time or cold weather, there is no better way to experience the country than with a book. You can’t go wrong with the crime fiction of two authors in particular, Ragnar Jónasson and Arnaldur Indridason. This review covers the latter writer and his new Detective Konrad novel, THE GIRL BY THE BRIDGE.

"THE GIRL BY THE BRIDGE shows the dark side of a country and town accustomed mostly to lightness, and it will shake readers in the same way that it does Detective Konrad."

I love reading stories set in foreign lands. Not only do I learn about their customs and ways of living, I get to find out about their police procedural methods. Indridason is the ideal tour guide for this foray into Reykjavik, and his protagonist is the perfect muse for this literary journey.

THE GIRL BY THE BRIDGE revolves around three different incidents, one in the present and two in the distant past. Konrad’s active days on the police force are behind him, but he still takes on cases as a private detective. In his current investigation, an elderly couple is looking for their granddaughter, 20-year-old Danni. They are aware that she is involved with a drug smuggling ring, and she has completely disappeared.

To find Danni, Konrad not only must examine her entire life, he will have to connect with the past. The title of the novel refers to a decades-old cold case in which the body of a young girl was fished out of the water beneath a bridge in Reykjavik. When a doll was also found floating there, it was presumed that she had fallen in after her cherished possession and perished. How Indridason is able to tie this case to the present-day one is a thing of beauty.

Konrad confirms that Danni is a drug mule. The results are not pretty, and the people with whom she is mixed up are not to be trifled with. Which brings us to the final leg in this tripod of a mystery. Though Konrad was always aware that his father, who was stabbed to death years ago, could have been conducting nefarious business, it does not become apparent until he digs further into these two cases. The revelations are, in a word, shocking.

It impresses me to no end that Indridason crosses the paths of the various narratives to create a compelling tale. THE GIRL BY THE BRIDGE shows the dark side of a country and town accustomed mostly to lightness, and it will shake readers in the same way that it does Detective Konrad.