Published by Corylus Books; many thanks for giving me the opportunity to review "Murder Tide".
The Stella Blómkvist books have been a bestselling series in Iceland since the first book was published in the late 1990's. The books have been published under a pseudonym – and the author’s identity is still secret. When the English translation of her mystery "Murder at the Residence" came out in 2023, I reviewed an advance copy. I also reviewed the next book in the series, "Murder Under the Midnight Sun". Credit goes to Quentin Bates for the excellent translations.
Icelandic mysteries are among my favorites. I love the landscape, the characters, and the general tone of the genre. It's no surprise that I fell for Stella Blómkvist after reading the first two books, because in addition to being compelling mysteries, they're a lot of fun. Stella is an unforgettable and eminently likeable character, if you like your cynicism and your whiskey nice and strong. She's a firm believer in taking advantage of life's pleasures. Stella often quotes her late mother and one of these pithy sayings, “Few things are as exciting as those you know you shouldn’t do,” are words that Stella lives by.
Stella is an attorney living in Reykjavik, a single mother to daughter Sóley Árdís. She's also a first-rate private investigator due to her local knowledge and tenacious pursuit of the truth. You want Stella to be on your side if you're in trouble. If you need to know something, Stella can find it out. She has contacts everywhere. She's a great ally and a dangerous enemy.
In her office waiting for the first client of the morning, Stella has a strange visit from a local medium, Dýrleif. Dýrleif tells Stella that she's had visions of a man in the water, bound and gagged, about to drown. She insists that Stella must save him before he dies. Since Dýrleif can't provide a name or a location, Stella kicks her out, thinking the whole thing a waste of time. She will think of this visit again.
Stella's first client of the day is Úlfhildur. Stella has been safekeeping a envelope addressed to Úlfhildur from her mother, to be opened only after her death, and Úlfhildur is here to read it. Úlfhildur's mother confesses the truth about her daughter's father, with whom she had an illicit affair. When she got pregnant, he demanded she have an abortion and abandoned her. She saved all of his love letters from that time and left them to Úlfhildur so she would know the story behind her paternity.
This news comes as a shock to Úlfhildur and Stella can sympathize; she herself is still unsure who the father of her own daughter is. The man who wrote the letters is Konráð Kristjónsson, now the leader of a religious community called "The Nest". Stella cautions Úlfhildur about meeting him; given his position. Konráð probably won't be too happy to meet a daughter he doesn't know about from a long-past affair. However, Úlfhildur is determined to meet him so Stella agrees to set it up.
Stella then makes her morning check of the News Blog, written by reporter and sometimes accomplice Máki. Murder is front-page news. The police found a body identified as former Member of Parliament Grímúlfur Halldórsson. Grímúlfur was a rich and powerful man with a lot of influence and the police are eager to find his killer, and fast. When Stella reads that the body was found in the water, bound and gagged, she flashes back to Dýrleif's visions; did she too easily dismiss the medium? Her thoughts are interrupted by a call from Chief Superintendent Ragnar Jónatansson ("Raggi").
Raggi tells Stella that a fisherman called Hávarður has been arrested for Grímúlfur's murder and wants Stella to represent him. He's got a motive for the killing; according to the cops, the victim "stole" Hávarður's fishing quota. Before the Icelandic financial crisis, Hávarður took out a loan to buy a trawler and a quota to fish. But when the banks crashed and the exchange rate went into free-fall, the bank demanded the money, which Hávarður didn't have, and handed the company to Grímúlfur.
Stella soon realizes that the other evidence against Hávarður is thin, but the only way to clear him is to find the real culprit. The police are convinced they have the killer and refuse to investigate further, so Stella's got to do it for them. Her P.I. instincts are awakened.
Then, she gets a surprising note from Sævar Ásgeirsson, better known as "Psycho Sævar", a low-life debt collector and drug smuggler. They loathe each other, but even though she once put him in prison, now he wants her to represent him. Stella is no stranger to bizarre requests, but this one makes her think seriously about seeing him again, let alone representing him.
Stella can't linger on this long; she's got to set up a meeting for Úlfhildur to meet her father. Úlfhildur returns to tell Stella that meeting her father and his wife Sveindís was a disaster. Konráð hardly spoke to her except to say that she should "look to her father in heaven for solace". Sveindís called Úlfhildur's claim "bullshit" and ordered her to leave. Despite the evidence in the letters, there is no chance that Konráð will take a paternity test. When Stella hears how the couple acted, she takes the natural next step: plotting revenge.
Stella goes to meet with Hávarður, held in jail for Grímúlfur's murder. He claims his boat was nowhere near the crime scene and he spent the night with a woman he picked up in a bar. With no name or any other info, how is Stella going to find the one person who could clear Hávarður's name? Complicating her situation, she discovers that the evidence against Hávarður is both incriminating and shady. She enlists the help of Maki, who runs the News Blog, to research Grímúlfur's background and connections.
Stella's already got her hands full, but she's amused by the foul note that Psycho Sævar sent asking for her help. Why Stella, who loathes him as much as he despises her?
She visits him in prison and Sævar tells her he wants her to be his liaison to the prosecutor to negotiate a deal. Sævar wants his release in return for giving the police incriminating information on the "big men" at the top of a large drug smuggling operation. (He has phone call audio files stored in encrypted folders on a memory stick). She agrees to be the negotiator, but when her family's lives are endangered because of her work on Sævar's case, she can only think about one thing: destroying the people responsible. Stella is more than up for it.
Stella is used to working on more than one case at a time, but needs more than just her resolve and courage in "Murder Tide". In "Murder At the Residence", Stella was a bit of a lone wolf. Over time her personal relationships have become more central to her work. Now, she can call in a team of accomplices. Maki's research proves invaluable, turning up crucial family and business connections between Stella's cases. Her cousin Sissi, an IT guru, lends his technical expertise to Psycho Sævar's case, but ends up helping her with a lot more. Her relationship with Chief Superintendant Raggi comes in handy when she figures out that someone on the force is working against her. Toward the end, when Stella is fighting for her life, she even acknowledges Dýrleif visions as “...female intuition, the soul’s smoke alarm.”
No matter what she's working on, Stella continues to amuse me with her witty cynicism and I admire the risks she takes to protect those she loves. Her dry outlook on life, provided as running commentary throughout the book, is one of the reasons why reading the Stella Blómkvist mysteries is so much fun. Another reason is the setting; the book's home base is Reykjavik, but Stella's travels take her all around Iceland. It's a fascinating country and a suitable background for the natural force that is Stella Blómkvist. There are many other books in the Blómkvist series, and I'm looking forward to future translations.
Please buy/order "Murder Tide" from your local independent bookstore, or go to bookshop.org and order there. They now offer ebooks as well.
For audiobooks, go to libro.fm.
