The Absolution is the third in the “Children’s House” series of books from one if Iceland’s leading crime writers.
A teenager has been brutally murdered, with the perpetrator first capturing some kind of apology and then sharing the video to victim’s friends on Snapchat. The police race to capture the video while it’s still there and to try to understand why a seemingly popular girl should have been targeted.
Police detective Huldur is tasked with some responsibilities in the case, although he feels ostracised. A brief affair with his boss has gone wrong, and office politics are getting in the way. Freyja from child services gets involved because the police need a liaison when interviewing kids. Between them, the two begin to suspect that bullying might be involved.
Bullying is a very relevant theme, and given the magnitude of what can be done digitally, it’s not such a stretch to believe that it might be a rationale for murder.
I came to this series fresh, not having read either of the other books in the series, although I have read several of her Thóra Gudmundsdóttir series. Sigurðardóttir conveys enough backstory to get newer readers quickly up to speed, and ongoing storylines properly developed.
Icelandic crime writers do have plenty of challenges specific to that country to keep readers engaged. Collectively writers have created vastly more murder victims than the country actually has in 2017 there were a total of four murders, which was twice the usual rate. The country’s population is less than 340,000 which means that while everyone doesn’t literally know everyone else, it’s not far off. And then there’s the deCODE database, which famously featured in Arnaldur Indriðason’s Jar City, which has DNA profile of a large proportion of the Icelandic population. As such, it’s a bit like mobile phones in horror films – you have to work around the problems that they can present.
This book is thoroughly engaging, and I shall go back to the previous two titles in the series.
Thanks to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for my ARC. The Absolution is out in hardback on 18 April 2019.