Black as Death by Lilja Sigurðardøttir (translated by Lorenza Garcia)

Today's my stop on the blog tour for Black as Death, The last in the An Áróra Investigation series, by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, translated into English by Lorenza Garcia. Because I wasn't organised enough to have written this early and scheduled the post, I'm writing this from a sun lounger in Tenerife! It's a hard life! Normal service will resume next week. Big thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inviting me and to the publisher for my review copy.

 

The Blurb

The haunting final chapter to an award-winning series…
And a final reckoning…

With the fate of her missing sister, Ísafold, finally uncovered, Áróra feels a fragile relief as the search that consumed her life draws to a close. But when Ísafold’s boyfriend – the prime suspect in her disappearance – is found dead at the same site where Ísafold’s body was discovered, Áróra’s grip on reality starts to unravel … and the mystery remains far from solved.

To distract herself, she dives headfirst into a money laundering case that her boyfriend Daníel is investigating. But she soon finds that there is more than meets the eye and, once again, all leads point towards Engihjalli, the street where Ísafold lived and died, and a series of shocking secrets that could both explain and endanger everything.

Black as Death is published in the UK by Orenda Books and will be out on 23rd October this year.

My Review

This is the last in the An Áróra Investigation series and the overarching storyline told across the books reaches its conclusion here. But whilst you'll have a richer reading experience if you've read the books in order, don't worry if you haven't as all the information you'll need is here. And this book has its own mystery for Áróra (with a little help from boyfriend Daniel) to get her teeth into.

Áróra is such an interesting character. It's taken her a while to feel.more settled in Iceland despite her Icelandic heritage via her father. She's dogged, determined and able to handle herself. Finding out that the case of her sister Ísafold isn't what she or the police had thought throws her off balance and she revisits people and places connected to Ísafold, despite Daniel's warnings. But he does distract her a little with the case he is investigating. Her speciality is financial crime, and there is definitely something afoot at coffeehouse chain Kaffikó.

Daniel is a lovely character, gentle and kind, and whilst he struggles sometimes to know where he is with Áróra, he provides the calm she needs. And I was delighted to see that Lady Gúgúlú, Daniel's former lodger, is back for a visit. Helena has a new trainee and all  these characters, and the more minor ones, are all really well written.

I must confess I wasn't entirely happy with the ending as I wanted something different for Áróra. But the ending Lilja has written totally fits her character - it's just mr.

Considering this is as much about do with financial crime as about Isafold's case it maybe surprising there is a fair bit of violence here. It's tense and exciting. Black as Death is a great story bringing to a conclusion a mystery spanning five books, as well as the one contained just in this novel. I will miss Áróra but excited to see what comes next from author Lilja Sigurðardóttir.

The Author

Icelandic crime writer Lilja Sigurðardóttir was born in the  of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written eleven crime novels, including Snare, Trap and Cage, making up the Reykjavík Noir trilogy, and her standalone thriller Betrayal, all of which have hit bestseller lists worldwide. Snare was longlisted for the CWA International Dagger, Cage won Best Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year and was a Guardian Book of the Year, and Betrayal was shortlisted for the prestigious Glass Key Award and won Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year. The film rights for the Reykjavík Noir trilogy have been bought by Glassriver. Cold as Hell, the first book in the An Áróra Investigation series, was published in the UK in 2021 and was followed by Red as Blood, White as Snow and Dark as Night. TV rights to the series have been bought by Studio Zentral in Germany. Lilja lives in Reykjavik with her partner and a brood of chickens.