I Remember You: A Ghost Story

Two cases of vanished children propel this meticulously plotted supernatural thriller from Icelandic author Sigurdardottir (Ashes to Dust). In the first, a trio of travelers to the isolated Westfjords village of Hesteyri are thwarted in their efforts to renovate a home they have purchased by a dangerously mischievous spectral child. In the second, psychiatrist Freyr and police detective Dagný investigate the vandalizing of a grade school in Ísafjördur and uncover clues that recall a similar incident at the school 60 years before that occurred shortly after the unsolved disappearance of one of its pupils. Delving into the past, Freyr finds a string of bizarre deaths that claimed the schoolboy’s classmates in adulthood. Though incidents in the Hesteyri thread become a little static and repetitive compared to the complicated fact-sifting Ísafjördur thread, the author draws both strands of her story together for an unpredictable finale that blends the best aspects of the tale of mystery and the tale of the supernatural. (Mar.)