Ragnar Jónasson is a huge fan of Dame Agatha Chrisite. In fact, he often has modeled his work after Christie and enjoys paying homage to her whenever he can. That has never been more apparent than in his latest novel, THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE MISSING CRIME WRITER, where he takes an infamous part of Christie’s past and incorporates it into a new mystery featuring a missing Icelandic crime writer who is being pursued by a young detective.

The action jumps primarily between the years 2002 and 2012, with other significant past events thrown in to advance the plot. The book opens in 2002 with a newspaper announcement for Elín S. Jónsdóttir’s latest novel. Elín traditionally has released a new book every other year. So after 20 years, she has now completed #10, which she says will be her last. Throughout the story, we also are made privy to an interview done with Elín that is quite telling and full of clues pertaining to the mystery here.

"The red herrings and clues continue, almost defying the reader to call them all out and take a guess as to what they believe really happened to Elín."

In 2012, we travel along with Detective Helgi Reykdal, who will be investigating Elín’s mysterious disappearance. He is quite familiar with her work and is an enthusiastic fan of the mystery genre, which is made evident when we see that he’s carrying with him a copy of Christie’s PERIL AT END HOUSE. During one of the interview snippets, we find that Elín confesses to having disappeared on more than one occasion in the past.

As Helgi begins to talk to people close to Elín, he realizes that her life was not what it appeared to be, which nicely colors her as an unreliable narrator of sorts. Meanwhile, Helgi is dealing with his own drama as his girlfriend, Anita, seems to be getting harassed by his ex-girlfriend, Bergthora. He wishes to himself that he could just make Bergthora go away. Readers will pick up from this how the act of disappearing is a strong plot element peppered throughout the novel.

Jónasson’s regular readers will appreciate that Helgi has taken over the office that once belonged to Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir, who is even depicted in some flashbacks to the ’70s investigating a bank robbery that may have ties to this current case.

More pieces of the puzzle that is Elín’s life begin to fit into place. The red herrings and clues continue, almost defying the reader to call them all out and take a guess as to what they believe really happened to Elín. That is the beauty of THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE MISSING CRIME WRITER, and Ragnar Jónasson truly seems to enjoy telling this story.