Un vieil homme meurt seul dans son appartement de Reykjavik. Intriguée, la police découvre que cet ancien policier était encore hanté, des décennies plus tard, par le meurtre d’une jeune fille pendant les années de guerre. Le dernier volet de la ”Trilogie des ombres”, qui oscille entre présent et passé et lève le voile sur des mythes islandais et certains aspects peu glorieux de son histoire, est certainement le plus percutant, troublant et touchant de la série. ( )

Dernier volet de la trilogie des ombres, il permet de dire adieu aux enquêteurs Flovent et Thorson, qu'on aurait aimé mieux connaître, tout en introduisant leur successeur Konrad. Le mélange de temporalités permet de rouvrir une affaire non classée qui hante depuis toujours les trois protagonistes. Le roman se laisse lire sans peine et évoque davantage les croyances islandaises. Le suspense et la tension demeurent néanmoins limités.

Sous la forme d'un haïku :
Affaires non classées,
Deux femmes crient encore dans l'ombre,
Mordues par les elfes. ( )

Combining a modern murder and two seventy year old murders this is a good solid police procedural. Although set in Iceland with fairy folk for local colour this book could have taken place anywhere. It's hard to work out whodunit and the initial police case seems extremely hollow. The ending clears most things up. The book flits about between periods and points of view. Chapter names would help here ( )

With this book, Indridason launches a new series called the Reykjavik Wartime mysteries. At the outset, an old man is found dead in his flat, apparently dying in his sleep. The autopsy suggests otherwise and the police start to take an interest. Retired detective Konrad gets involved, struck by the fact that the old man was in possession of newspaper clippings about the death of a young girl in the Shadow District of wartime Reykjavik.

The action switches between Konrad's investigation into the old man's death and the original investigation of the Shadow District murder. Konrad finds very few records of that murder, and needs to rework the cold case to try and understand what happened to the old man.

This is a fairly straightforward police procedural, with the clever twist of the two parallel investigations. The pretext for Konrad getting involved at all seemed thin to me, and he is nowhere near as absorbing a character as the gloomy, obsessive Erlendur. The Iceland of this novel is also quite different to the forbidding place of Indridason's earlier work; there is much less sense of place here.

There are one or two plot points that are not cleared up adequately, but that may be something to be addressed in the later books. I'll keep reading, because this author is far too good not to stick with. ( )

Alertados por una inquilina preocupada porque uno de sus vecinos lleva tiempo sin dar señales de vida, dos policías encuentran el cadáver de un anciano sobre la cama. El análisis forense dictamina que fue asfixiado, probablemente con una almohada. El registro del domicilio del difunto saca a la luz unos recortes de prensa sobre una joven que, en 1944, fue estrangulada y cuyo cuerpo fue depositado en la parte trasera del Teatro Nacional de Reikjavik. ¿Pueden ambas muertes estar relacionadas pese a las seis décadas que las separan?