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Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and Icelandic Crime

Two of my recent visitors have been from Iceland and there is a phenomenon that is growing fast, that of the UK selling large quantities of Scandinavian and Icelandic crime fiction. The great Stieg Larsson started things off with maybe the best trilogy that will ever be written about the Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. Jo Nesbo continued things along with a series of superb novels and now an Icelandic authoress, Yrsa Siguradottir continues on. 

Currently I am reading the second novel from her, and having read her most recent novel first, am working backwards. Her writing cannot be praised too highly. Not only does she convey an extraordinary complexity of plot but she captures the characters so well. Surprisingly the books are also humourous, with some descriptions of her secretary/assistant Bella, being described as a Gothic tugboat, opening the mind to what exactly she looks like. The other people who deserve praise are the translators of all these novels as they read in English as fluently as one imagines they would having been written by a native english speaker. The current book is called (English translation by Philip Roughton, Ashes to Dust, UK:July 2010). 

Her facebook link

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Yrsa-Sigurðardóttir/17790914348