Where the Shadows Lie is a new book from British author Michael Ridpath. It is about modern police work, the Icelandic sagas and The Lord of the Rings; all set in Iceland and in Boston. Sounds confusing, right?
Indeed, in terms of finding a market for the book and deciding where to focus scarce marketing money in the cutthroat world of publishing, it is a confusing mix-up of a book.
But from the care-free reader’s point-of-view it actually works exceedingly well.
At a time when murder mystery police novels are selling well – and ones by Nordic authors are selling even better – it might at first seem like Ridpath is climbing onto some sort of bandwagon. Then add in the fact that his novel is actually written about a group of other famous books and that assumption might seem confirmed. But it takes a certain amount of imagination to come up with a modern murder mystery connected to the Lord of the Rings trilogy; and Ridpath pulls it off. In fact I’d go as far as to say he pulls it off brilliantly.
The background to the story is that Magnus Jonson, a Boston detective of Icelandic descent, is seconded to the Icelandic police for his own protection after falling foul of drug barons. While working for the Icelandic police he becomes involved in an intriguing and historically-charged murder investigation featuring J.R.R. Tolkien, a previously-secret Icelandic saga and many residents of present-day Iceland, mid-kreppa (recession).
I’ve read my fair share of ‘foreign’ novels that are set in Iceland and they are often horribly inaccurate. We very select band of Icelandic journalists whose mother tongue is English are often left exasperated by these wannabe Icelandic novels which mangle the country’s cultural quirks, history, language and stereotypes. If nothing else, it takes one out of the moment and reduces one’s enjoyment of the story. It is also often evident that the author is desperate to show how much he/she knows about Iceland; something which might leave readers outside Iceland confused and unsure who the book was actually written for.
Pleasingly, Where the Shadows Lie manages to avoid both these traps. It remains eminently readable for those who barely know where Iceland is, while also remaining almost universally accurate in its Icelandic spelling, its descriptions of specific Reykjavik streets and its observations about Iceland and Icelanders post-banking-crisis. That said; the book does almost entirely avoid accented letters and Icelandic characters (just like IceNews, thinking about it!).
Overall I’d say this is a five-star effort as an entry in the select genre called ‘Icelandic novels written by non-Icelanders’. But rather pleasingly: as an exciting, imagination-fuelling, keep-‘em-guessing page turner, I’d rate it at least four stars by any standard.
Michael Ridpath’s Where the Shadows Lie (Corvus Publishing, released 1st June 2010)
Reviewed by Alëx Elliott, IceNews editor
Photo: Anders Peter Amsnæs
