Svart himmel (urspr publ 2009; utgåvan 2011)

As the latest book in Indridason’s absorbing Icelandic series gets under way, the year is 2008, and Erlendur, the dour but resourceful senior homicide detective in Reykjavik’s CID, is still out of action. That means the case of a young woman’s murder by bludgeoning falls to the dyspeptic Inspector Sigurdur Oli.

Familiar as the second banana in past books, Sigurdur Oli is abrupt and cranky by nature. He expresses his right wing political views in language that is about as nuanced as Rush Limbaugh’s. Nevertheless, he is reliably dogged, and he tracks the bludgeoning case through a tangle that includes wife-swapping, child pornography and murderous debt collectors.

When Sigurdur Oli’s sleuthing gains momentum, he frequently brushes against Iceland’s financial community. He finds himself put off by the incredible extravagance he sees among the country’s bankers. “The problem,” Sigurdur Oli realizes, “is that few of the people involved in this new big-bucks business have much experience in finance, and some of them aren’t all that bright.”

Bearing in mind it’s 2008, Sigurdur Oli’s observations have particular resonance. Unrealized by him and by almost everybody else, he has touched on the causes behind the economic recession that would crush Iceland’s economy later that year and soon spread around the world. Throughout Black Skies, while Sigurdur Oli gets on with the immediate business of solving a murder case, the message that pounds in the book’s background is all about the greed and stupidity of bankers.