Mystery Scene Review

Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir
William Morrow, October, 2007

From the land of Arnaldur Indridason and his Reykjavík thrillers comes another excellent Icelandic crime writer. Yrsa Sigurdardóttir's female protagonist, Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, is a lawyer, single mother of two--and a lot funnier than the dour Scandanavian cops crime readers have gotten used to.

Thóra's law firm is struggling when a wealthy German family offers her an eye-popping amount to investigate the savage murder of their son, Harald, who was attending university in Iceland. The fee is enough to keep the firm afloat, but she must work with the family's representative Matthew Reich, an uncommunicative, humorless security man newly arrived from Germany and unhappy to be in Iceland. As they investigate Harald's strange death, the pair uncover a secret world of witchcraft, black magic, and ritual mutilation involving a coven of Harald's strange friends and the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), a late medieval manual on witches and witchcraft. The tale only becomes progressively more strange.

Thóra is a smart, resourceful amateur detective, who manages to work well with her partner Matthew, all the while juggling her life with a surly teenage son and a nine-year-old daughter. Last Rituals is less gloomy than the usual northern European crime novel and hopefully, this is the beginning of a series. Readers will surely be interested to read more about Thóra and her world.

- Charles L.P. Silet

This review appeared in the Holiday 2007 issue (#102) of the magazine