So while I was at the library, picked up
Michael Ridpath's
Meltwater and
Sea of Stone, 3rd & 4th novels in his Fire & Ice series starring Magnus Jonson aka Magnús Ragnarsson, Intrepid Bi-National Icelandic-American Returned Expat Cop On Loan.
Meltwater was a pretty pulled from the headlines sort of story (as acknowledged in the author's notes in the back), making use of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruptions (obligatory
Scandinavia and the World cartoon), to trap a WikiLeaks-analogue team in the country, with a dangerously hot story and enemies after them. Very current affairs. In the meanwhile, the series B-plot of Magnus looking further into his father's long-ago unsolved murder, as well as tensions with his estranged maternal family, picks up, introducing a few new characters as well.
The A-plot was done fairly well, doing a decent job of showing the motivations and tensions that affect a disparate group of international foreigners who'd put their lives on the line for a significant whistleblowing story but have differing levels of personal integrity, and the uneasy interaction they have with the Icelandic authorities (amusingly, they assume that Magnus is secretly a CIA plant, because his American-accented English is too good). Once again, the sagas and Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author Halldór Laxness are invoked, but in a more backgrounded way; although the theme of moral dilemmas, personal sacrifice, and the cycle of revenge killings touches upon both the A and B-plots, setting up some events that kick off book #4.
Sea of Stone is the one where the investigation of Magnus' father's murder comes to a head, as well as the culmination of the simmering tensions in his estranged family on both maternal and paternal sides, and all is revealed in an interestingly twisty way. This is done in a deliberately very saga-esque sort of way, with grand passions leading to terrible outcomes as it turns out that the characters have gotten caught up in an intertwining net of cumulative tragedy which they cannot escape. Also how the effects of domestic tyranny from just one member can end up warping an entire extended family.
Like the sagas, it's one of those stories where there are few clear heroes or villains (well, maybe one for the latter, but it was one you already knew about going in), just people trying to cope as best they can with the bad life decisions that were all they thought could make under the circumstances and were blinded to other possible alternatives. This includes Magnus, who makes his own bad decision which turns out to be unnecessary, but was the best thing he thought he could do at the time.
This is one of the timeline-jumping ones, which brings Magnus back to Boston in flashback for part of his investigation, both showing how much he's changed since his time in Iceland and what things for him have stayed the same, as a long-term US immigrant, as well as laying the path for the eventual case-closing reveals, which includes some startling stuff that looks like it will have significant personal repercussions in the future, even though the case is ostensibly solved by the end. Although this is clearly planned as a wrap-up to the ongoing B-plot arc, I'm interested in seeing where future novels go with the eventual fallout, and possible reunion of the family on one axis, but further estrangement on another.
Also finished
The Polar Bear Killing, an e-book exclusive novella set after the events of #4 but which doesn't really refer to them, gives no real clues in that regard, but provides a nice spotlight for Magnus' colleague Vigdís Audarsdóttir, who has the distinction of being Iceland's only black detective, thanks to her mother's long-ago one-night stand with a US serviceman at the Keflavík air base.
Throughout the novels, Vigdís' insider/outsider status, with her having been purely Iceland born and raised, but perceived as a foreigner by her own people due to her appearance (which she copes with by refusing to speak English at all), and Magnus' outsider/insider status, with him being a returned emigrant Icelander raised in the US and very Americanized, but treated as a regular Icelander by people who know he's an expat, until it becomes convenient to blame something about him on his American upbringing, get contrasted a lot to explore their differing receptions.
I actually really like Vigdís, so it was nice to see her get a spotlight, even though Magnus was kind of contractually obliged to swoop in with some case-solving hints, since it's technically his own series. (I hope Árni, another one of Magnus' entertainingly eccentric junior colleagues, gets a spotlight novella at some point.)
Anyway, this is another ripped-from-the-headlines sort of story, albeit in a more generic way, since hungry polar bears floating in from Greenland and the controversy surrounding how to deal with them now that tranquilizer darts are available, and animal rights activist protests of traditional Icelandic activities (normally for whaling), are a staple of local news stories, and provided a nice look into the mixed local and foreign cultural attitudes.
Medium-high recommend for the series as a whole. So far, the cases have been fairly well laid out, with plausible whodunnits and twists that mostly make sense. The contrasting cultural stuff is quite interesting and nicely depicted if you're interested, giving an entertaining picture of both Iceland and the outside perception of Iceland, and an imaginative tying-in of the cultural background to the cases. The first book is a little shaky in execution, but the rest soon find their footing, and #4 is a very well done cap to the B-plot and a fitting climax to the series as a whole. Also, the author puts up helpful photos of the locations he uses on his website (viz.
the gallery for #3, which shows some of the locations as affected by the volcanic eruption), which is a nice touch. I've gotten to really like this series and hope there will be more.