Digital Sextant

Jar City

by Arnaldur Indridason

Jar City follows Detective Erlendur as he investigates the seemingly random murder of an old man with an ash tray.  What he uncovers is a whole lot more sordid, complicated, and grim.  A few thoughts:

• I haven’t read or seen very many Nordic mysteries–Death in Amsterdam, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and the PBS Wallander series–but man, are they gloomy.  Jar City is no different.  What’s strange is that I find very little reason or specifics about what make it gloomy.  It just IS.  Dark and dreary, and so sad.
• The main character feels a bit like a shlubby detective who plods from place to place but he also carries himself strongly.  At one point, a couple toughs come around looking for his daughter and he shatters one of their knees in the door and shoves the other down a flight of stairs.  Then he goes back to moping.
• I like the tie-in with Iceland’s relative homogeneity as a genetic pool.  It’s an interesting element in the story.
• The side characters are really solid, with good distinction between them and realistic reactions to police inquiries.  In many ways, this reminds me more of a Classical detective story in which the detective interviews, then returns and interviews some more.  The police procedural part of the story is pretty minimized.
• The title comes from a cool little fact that hospitals in Iceland regularly saved organs or other samples from cadavers for instruction.  These samples were kept in glass jars in secret rooms in teaching hospitals and universities.  They referred to these rooms as Jar City.

Overall, worth reading but probably not something I’d recommend very strongly.