Cage by Lilja Sigarðardóttir (translated by Quentin Bates)

Having recently read and reviewed Snare and Trap by Lilja Sigarðardóttir, I am delighted today to be featuring the final part of the Reykjavik Noir trilogy, Cage, as part of the blog tour. Huge thanks to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours and Karen Sullivan at Orenda Books for my review copy.

The Blurb:

A masterful conclusion to the award-winning, critically acclaimed Reykjavík Noir trilogy, as drug-smuggling, financial crime, political intrigue, love, murder and betrayal come together.

The prison doors slam shut behind  Agla, when her sentence for financial misconduct ends, but her lover Sonja is not there to meet her.

As a group of foreign businessmen tries to draw Agla into an  ingenious fraud  that stretches from Iceland around the world, Agla and  her former nemesis María find the stakes being raised at a terrifying speed. Ruthless entrepreneur Ingimar will stop at nothing to protect his empire, but he has no idea about the powder keg he is sitting on in his own home. And at the same time, a deadly threat to Sonja and her family brings her from London back to Iceland, where she needs to settle scores with longstanding adversaries if she wants to stay alive…

The lives of these characters are about to collide in a shocking crescendo, until the winner takes it all…

Cage was published by Orenda Books as an eBook on 17th August 2019 and in paperback on 17th October 2019. You can purchase it from the publisher, Waterstones, Amazon UK, Amazon US and all good bookshops.


My Review:

This is the final book in the series and takes place about six years after the events in Trap. And it's a very different Sonja and Agla we meet. You can read Cage as a standalone, but I would suggest it's best appreciated if you've to read the previous two instalments.

We join Agla in prison, a month before she will be up for parole, and she is broken. Abandoned by Sonja without ever knowing why, she has pretty much given up. Until a stranger comes to visit her in prison and ignites a spark within her. Suddenly she finds herself with a purpose. But she will need some help from adversary María. And she'll have to try to not get distracted by new arrival Elísa, a drugs courier for the Boss.

María's circumstances have also taken a turn for the worse. No longer working at the special prosecutor's office, she is now an investigative journalist working out of a crappy office and in sure need of a cash injection.

This book is mainly Agla and María's story, but we do see a little of Sonja. Now living in London, she has constant 24 hour security, trusts no one and can never relax. And whilst the joy in her life still comes from son Tómas, even their relationship has changed.

In the last two books I struggled a bit to relate to Alga. I connected with her in this book. The early chapters in the prison where we see her pain, her vulnerability and the conflicting emotions that Elísa awakens in her, ones that she had numbed herself to, were the scenes that touched me most in the book. María is hurting too, and it was clear to see her sadness through the writing. I loved her concern for, and dealings with, her unofficial sidekick Marteinn. And we even see a more human side to Ingimar.

But for me, the standout character was Anton. A kind, sensitive young man who is crazy about his girlfriend, but very misguided about how to impress her. His absolute belief that what he is doing is right was quite scary, and showed the lengths someone will go to for love. But my heart kind if went out to him, for the same reason - he's trying to be the best boyfriend he can possibly be. But there are perhaps better ways for him to do it. There was a shock for me in his story too.

When I had finished Snare, the first book in the trilogy, this wasn't the ending I foresaw for Sonja and Agla, but it absolutely works. As well as being a complex, intelligent crime novel full of tension and fear, this is a story about love, both lost and gained, loyalty and hope. I'm sad to say goodbye to these characters, but I can't wait to see what Lilja Sigurðardóttir brings us next.


The Author:

Icelandic crime-writer Lilja Sigurðardóttir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written four crime novels, with Snare, the first in the Reykjavik Noir series, hitting bestseller lists worldwide. Trap was published in 2018, and a Book of the Year in Guardian. The film rights for the series have been bought by Palomar Pictures in California. Lilja lives in Reykjavík with her partner. Follow Lilja on Twitter @lilja1972 and on her website liljawriter.com