The Silence of the Sea

When a yacht crashes into a Reykjavík harbor jetty in the prologue of Sigurdardóttir’s outstanding sixth Thóra Gudmundsdóttir thriller (after 2015’s Someone to Watch over Me), onlookers are shocked to find no one aboard—no captain, no crew, and no sign of the young family that was traveling with them. Margeir Karelsson and Sigrídur Veturlidadóttir retain attorney Thóra to investigate and provide proof of death for their missing son, his wife, and their twin granddaughters. At stake is the life insurance payout, as well as the fate of the twins’ two-year-old sister, left behind in the grandparents’ care. But why are there rumors that the yacht was cursed? Sigurdardóttir does a masterly job of weaving together the story of Thóra’s painstaking investigation with an account of the voyage and its horrifying spiral into disaster. In effect a locked-boat mystery enhanced with a hint of ghosts, this deliciously eerie variation on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians won the Petrona Award for best Scandinavian crime novel in 2015. [em](Feb.) [/em]