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Voices: An Inspector Erlendur Novel Kindle Edition
Arnaldur Indridason took the international crime fiction scene by storm after winning England's CWA Gold Dagger Award for Silence of the Grave. Now, with the highly anticipated Voices, this world-class sensation treats American readers to another extraordinary Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson thriller.
The Christmas rush is at its peak in a grand Reykjavík hotel when Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson is called in to investigate a murder. The hotel Santa has been stabbed, and Erlendur and his detective colleagues have no shortage of suspects between hotel staff and the international travelers staying for the holidays.
But then a shocking secret surfaces. As Christmas Day approaches, Erlendur must deal with his difficult daughter, pursue a possible romantic interest, and untangle a long-buried web of malice and greed to find the murderer.
One of Indridason's most accomplished works to date, Voices is sure to win him a multitude of new American suspense fans.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMinotaur Books
- Publication dateSeptember 2, 2008
- File size751 KB
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
–Irish Times
“Morosely, intelligently, Erlendur unravels the mystery. With Voices Indridason proves that his Golden Dagger victory for Silence of the Grave last year was no fluke.”
–The Times
From the Paperback edition.
About the Author
Arnaldur Indridason won the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Silence of the Grave and is the only author to win the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel two years in a row, for Jar City and Silence of the Grave. Strange Shores was nominated for the 2014 CWA Gold Dagger Award and Reykjavik Nights was nominated for the Petrona Award 2015.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Elínborg was waiting for them at the hotel.
A large Christmas tree stood in the lobby and there were decorations, fir branches and glittering baubles all around. ‘Silent night, holy night’, over an invisible sound system. A large shuttle coach stood in front of the hotel and a group approached the reception desk. Tourists who were planning to spend Christmas and the New Year in Iceland because it seemed to them like an adventurous and exciting country. Although they had only just landed, many had apparently already bought traditional Icelandic sweaters, and they checked into the exotic land of winter. Erlendur brushed the sleet off his raincoat. Sigurdur Óli looked around the lobby and caught sight of Elínborg by the lifts. He tugged at Erlendur and they walked over to her. She had examined the scene. The first police officers to arrive there had made sure that it would remain untouched.
The hotel manager had asked them not to cause a fracas. Used that phrase when he rang. This was a hotel and hotels thrive on their reputations, and he asked them to take that into account. So there were no sirens outside, nor uniformed policemen bursting in through the lobby. The manager said that at all costs they should avoid arousing fear among the guests.
Iceland mustn’t be too exciting, too much of an adventure.
Now he was standing next to Elínborg and greeted Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli with a handshake. He was so fat that his suit hardly encompassed his body. His jacket was done up across the stomach by one button that was on the verge of giving up. The top of his trousers was hidden beneath a huge paunch that bulged out of his jacket and the man sweated so furiously that he could never put away the large white handkerchief with which he mopped his forehead and the back of his neck at regular intervals. The white collar of his shirt was soaked in perspiration. Erlendur shook his clammy hand.
‘Thank you,’ the hotel manager said, puffing like a grampus. In his twenty years of managing the hotel he had never encountered anything like this.
‘In the middle of the Christmas rush,’ he groaned. ‘I can’t understand how this could happen! How could it happen?’ he repeated, leaving them in no doubt as to how totally perplexed he was.
‘Is he up or down?’ Erlendur asked.
‘Up or down?’ the fat manager puffed. ‘Do you mean whether he’s gone to heaven?’
‘Yes,’ Erlendur said. ‘That’s exactly what we need to know…’
‘Shall we take the lift upstairs?’ Sigurdur Óli asked.
‘No,’ the manager said, casting an irritated look at Erlendur. ‘He’s down here in the basement. He’s got a little room there. We didn’t want to chuck him out. And then you get this for your troubles.’
‘Why would you have wanted to chuck him out?’ Erlendur asked.
The hotel manager looked at him but did not reply.
They walked slowly down the stairs beside the lift. The manager went first. Going down the stairs was a strain for him and Erlendur wondered how he would get back up.
Apart from Erlendur, they had agreed to show a certain amount of consideration, to try to approach the hotel as discreetly as possible. Three police cars were parked at the back, with an ambulance. Police officers and paramedics had gone in through the back door. The district medical officer was on his way. He would certify the death and call out a van to transport the body.
They walked down a long corridor with the panting manager leading the way. Plain-clothes policemen greeted them. The corridor grew darker the further they walked, because the light bulbs on the ceiling had blown and no one had bothered to change them. Eventually, in the darkness, they reached the door, which opened onto a little room. It was more like a storage space than a dwelling, but there was a narrow bed inside, a small desk and a tattered mat on the dirty tiled floor. There was a little window up near the ceiling.
The man was sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall. He was wearing a bright red Santa suit and still had the Santa cap on his head, but it had slipped down over his eyes. A large artificial Santa beard hid his face. He had undone the thick belt around his waist and unbuttoned his jacket. Beneath it he was wearing only a white vest. There was a fatal wound to his heart. Although there were other wounds on the body, the stabbing through the heart had finished him off. His hands had slash marks on them, as if he had tried to fight off the assailant. His trousers were down round his ankles. A condom hung from his penis.
‘Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer,’ Sigurdur Óli warbled, looking down at the body.
Elínborg hushed him.
In the room was a small wardrobe and the door was open. It contained folded trousers and sweaters, ironed shirts, underwear and socks. A uniform hung on a coat-hanger, navy blue with golden epaulettes and shiny brass buttons. A pair of smartly-polished black leather shoes stood beside the cupboard.
Newspapers and magazines were strewn over the floor. Beside the bed was a small table and lamp. On the table was a single book: A History of the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
‘Did he live here, this man?’ Erlendur asked as he surveyed the scene. He and Elínborg had entered the room. Sigurdur Óli and the hotel manager were standing outside. It was too small for them all inside.
‘We let him stay here,’ the manager said awkwardly, mopping the sweat from his brow. ‘He’s been working for us for donkey’s years. Since before my time. As a doorman.’
‘Was the door open when he was found?’ Sigurdur Óli asked, trying to be formal, as if to compensate for his little ditty.
‘I asked her to wait for you,’ the manager said. ‘The girl who found him. She’s in the staff coffee room. Gave her quite a shock, poor thing, as you can imagine.’ The manager avoided looking into the room.
Erlendur walked up to the body and peered at the wound to the heart. He had no idea what kind of blade had killed the man. He looked up. Above the bed was an old, faded poster for a Shirley Temple film, sellotaped at the corners. Erlendur didn’t know the film. It was called The Little Princess. The poster was the only decoration in the room.
‘Who’s that?’ Sigurdur Óli asked from the doorway as he looked at the poster.
‘It says on it,’ Erlendur said. ‘Shirley Temple.’
‘Who’s that then? Is she dead?’
‘Who’s Shirley Temple?’ Elínborg was astonished at Sigurdur Óli’s ignorance. ‘Don’t you know who she was? Didn’t you study in America?’
‘Was she a Hollywood star?’ Sigurdur Óli asked, still looking at the poster.
‘She was a child star,’ Erlendur said curtly. ‘So she’s dead in a sense anyway.’
‘Eh?’ Sigurdur Óli said, failing to grasp the remark.
‘A child star,’ Elínborg said. ‘I think she’s still alive. I don’t remember. I think she’s something with the United Nations.’
It dawned on Erlendur that there were no other personal effects in the room. He looked around but could see no bookshelf, CDs or computer, no radio or television. Only a desk, chair, wardrobe and bed with a scruffy pillow and dirty duvet cover. The little room reminded him of a prison cell.
He went out into the corridor and peered into the darkness at the far end, and could make out a faint smell of burning, as if someone had been playing with matches there or possibly lighting their way.
‘What’s down there?’ he asked the manager.
‘Nothing,’ he replied and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Just the end of the corridor. A couple of bulbs have gone. I’ll have that fixed.’
‘How long had he lived here, this man?’ Erlendur asked as he went back into the room.
‘I don’t know, since before my time.’
‘So he was here when you became the manager?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you telling me he lived in this hole for twenty years?’
‘Yes.’
Elínborg looked at the condom.
‘At least he practised safe sex,’ she said.
‘Not safe enough,’ Sigurdur Óli said.
At that point the district medical officer arrived, accompanied by a member of the hotel staff who then went back along the corridor. The medical officer was very fat too, although nowhere near a match for the hotel manager. When he squeezed into the room, Elínborg darted back out for air.
‘Hello, Erlendur,’ the medical officer said.
‘What does it look like?’ Erlendur asked.
‘Heart attack, but I need a better look,’ replied the medical officer, who was known for his appalling sense of humour.
Erlendur looked out at Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg, who were grinning from ear to ear.
‘Do you know when it happened?’ Erlendur asked.
‘Can’t be very long ago. Some time during the last two hours. He’s hardly begun to go cold. Have you located his reindeer?’
Erlendur groaned.
The medical officer lifted his hand from the body.
‘I’ll sign the certificate,’ he said. ‘You send it to the mortuary and they’ll open him up there. They say that orgasm is a kind of moment of death,’ he added, looking down at the body. ‘So he had a double.’
‘A double?’ Erlendur didn’t understand him.
‘Orgasm, I mean,’ the medical officer said. ‘You’ll take photographs, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Erlendur said.
‘They’ll look nice in his family album.’
‘He doesn’t appear to have any family,’ Erlendur said and looked around the room again. ‘So you’re done for the time being?’ he asked, eager to put an end to the wisecracks.
The district medical officer nodded, squeezed back out of the room and went down the corridor.
‘Won’t we have to close down the hotel?’ Elínborg asked, and noticed the manager gasp at her question. ‘Stop all traffic in and out. Question everyone staying here and all the staff? Close the airports. Stop ships leaving port…’
‘For God’s sake,’ the manager groaned, squeezing his handkerchief with an imploring look at Erlendur. ‘It’s only the doorman!’
Mary and Joseph would never have been given a room here, Erlendur thought to himself.
‘This…this…filth has nothing to do with my guests,’ the manager spluttered with indignation. ‘They’re tourists, almost all of them, and regional people, businessmen and the like. No one who has anything to do with the doorman. No one. This is one of the largest hotels in Reykjavík. It’s packed over the holidays. You can’t just close it down! You just can’t!’
‘We could, but we won’t,’ Erlendur said, trying to calm the manager down. ‘We’ll need to question some of the guests and most of the staff, I expect.’
‘Thank God,’ the manager sighed, regaining his composure.
‘What was the man’s name?’
‘Gudlaugur,’ the manager said. ‘I think he’s around fifty. And you’re right about his family, I don’t think he has any.’
‘Who visited him?’
‘I haven’t got a clue,’ the manager puffed.
‘Has anything unusual happened at the hotel involving this man?’
‘No.’
‘Theft?’
‘No. Nothing’s happened.’
‘Complaints?’
‘No.’
‘He hasn’t become embroiled in anything that could explain this?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Was he involved in any conflicts with anyone at this hotel?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Outside the hotel?’
‘Not that I know of but I don’t know him very well. Didn’t,’ the manager corrected himself.
‘Not after twenty years?’
‘No, not really. He wasn’t very sociable, I don’t think. Kept himself to himself as much as he could.’
‘Do you think a hotel is the right place for a man like him?’
‘Me? I don’t know…He was always very polite and there were never really any complaints about him.’
‘Never really?’
‘No, there were never any complaints about him. He wasn’t a bad worker really.’
‘Where’s the staff coffee room?’ Erlendur asked.
‘I’ll show you.’ The hotel manager mopped his brow, relieved that they would not close the hotel.
‘Did he have guests?’ Erlendur asked.
‘What?’ the manager said.
‘Guests,’ Erlendur repeated. ‘It looks like someone who knew him was here, don’t you think?’
The manager looked at the body and his eyes dwelled on the condom.
‘I don’t know anything about his girlfriends,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘You don’t know very much about this man,’ Erlendur said.
‘He’s a doorman here,’ the manager said, and felt that Erlendur should accept that by way of explanation.
They left the room. The forensics team went in with their equipment and more officers followed them. It was difficult for them all to squeeze their way past the manager. Erlendur asked them to examine the corridor carefully and the dark alcove further down. Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg stood inside the little room observing the body.
‘I wouldn’t like to be found like that,’ Sigurdur Óli said.
‘It’s no concern of his any more,’ Elínborg said.
‘No, probably not,’ Sigurdur Óli said.
‘Is there anything in it?’ Elínborg asked as she took out a little bag of salted peanuts. She was always nibbling at things. Sigurdur Óli thought it was because of nerves.
‘In it?’ Sigurdur Óli said.
She nodded in the direction of the body. After staring at her for a moment, Sigurdur Óli realised what she meant. He hesitated, then knelt down by the body and stared at the condom.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s empty.’
‘So she killed him before his orgasm,’ Elínborg said. ‘The doctor thought—’
‘She?’ Sigurdur Óli said.
‘Yes, isn’t that obvious?’ Elínborg said, emptying a handful of peanuts into her mouth. She offered some to Sigurdur Óli, who declined. ‘Isn’t there something tarty about it? He’s had a woman in here,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t he?’
‘That’s the simplest theory,’ Sigurdur Óli said, standing up.
‘You don’t think so?’ Elínborg said.
‘I don’t know. I don’t have the faintest idea.’
VOICES Copyright © 2003 by Arnaldur Indridason
Product details
- ASIN : B005G48X9A
- Publisher : Minotaur Books; First edition (September 2, 2008)
- Publication date : September 2, 2008
- Language : English
- File size : 751 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 332 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #357,841 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,459 in Heist Thrillers
- #2,051 in International Mystery & Crime (Kindle Store)
- #2,922 in Ghost Mysteries
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Arnaldur Indridason is the author of Jar City, Silence of the Grave, Voices, The Draining Lake, and Arctic Chill. He won the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Silence of the Grave and is the only author to win the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel two years in a row, for Jar City and Silence of the Grave. The film of Jar City, now available on DVD from Blockbuster, was Iceland’s entry for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, and the film of his next book, Silence of the Grave, is currently in production with the same director. His thrillers have sold more than five million copies in over 25 countries around the world. He lives in Iceland.
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This book has several narrative lines. The main mystery is about a hotel Santa who is found murdered in his basement room with his pants down and a condom on, stabbed many times. As Erlendur investigates, no one admits knowing this man who has lived rent free in the hotel for over 20 years. He was once a child prodigy, singing soprano so well that his father hoped he'd make it into the Vienna Boy's Choir. Unfortunately, his voice changed prematurely and he became a laughing-stock at his supposedly break-out concert.
Another story line takes us to a hospital where a young boy, badly physically abused, refuses to tell who the perpetrator was. Erlandur's colleague believes it is the boy's father despite the boy wanting to be returned to his father's custody.
Erlandur has been divorced for over 20 years. At the time of his divorce, he had two children who he never saw afterwards until recently. Eva Lind, his daughter, is a recovering drug addict and prostitute who is having trouble 'holding on' now. She was near death recently, having given birth to a still-born daughter near term and ending up in a coma. The infant died because Eva Lind's drugs toxified her system and Eva Lind can't forgive herself. She has looked up her father and is trying to develop a relationship with him.
Erlandur is living in self-hatred with survivor's guilt because of an incident that occurred in his childhood. When he was ten, he, his father and his younger brother went camping and were caught in a blizzard. Erlandur had been holding on to his brother's hand but unintentionally let it go. His brother's body was never found and Erlandur is tormented about why he lived while his brother died. The event sent his father into a lifelong depression and has weighed Erlandur down ever since. He rarely talks about this incident but thinks about it regularly, even returning to eastern Iceland where his brother died, and searches for his body.
The mystery of the Santa is very interesting but what makes this book stand out is the quality of the writing and the humanity of the characters. I have already started another book in this series and can hardly put it down.
But hey, if this were Tahiti, they wouldn't call it "Iceland".
And if one were to select a "Mr. Iceland" based on a personality most representative of this barren landscape of volcanoes and endless winter nights, Indridason's irascible police detective Erlander Sveinsson would leave the competition far behind.
In this installment of gloom, it is the Christmas season, and Erlander is called upon to investigate the murder of Gulauger Egilsson, a 50-ish doorman of one of Reykjavik's better hotels, found in his hotel basement room with his Santa Claus suit around his ankles and fatal knife wounds in his chest. What follows would be a rather pedestrian whodunit - a standard crime drama of turning up clues and connecting the dots - were it not for the talented Indridason and his penchant for painting with a palette of despair what could have been a Currier and Ives Scandinavian Holiday card. Unbeknownst to hotel management or staff, the reclusive Gulauger was once a child star - a choirboy of international fame, who at twelve had two records published, destined for fame and the Vienna Boys' Choir. But not content to rely solely on poor Gulanger's sordid tale, the author deftly weaves together parallel threads, each apparently competing to see which can be more depressing. We have Erlander's partner Elinborg chasing down a case of parental child abuse, while his daughter bounces from thoughts of suicide to drug addiction, pining over her complicity in the death of her own infant daughter. And Erlander, his own solitude no longer an effective shield under the tidal waves of grief and murder that surround him, reflects on and nearly confronts his own unresolved guilt following the death of his younger brother decades before. These threads wind tightly together in a tapestry of pain, lurching and stumbling, taking more twists than a pretzel factory in reaching a bitterly ironic, while fitting, climax.
So by now, you're probably wondering how this smörgåsbord of sorrow could rate five stars. The answer is Indridason's prose, the magic of a straightforward and unapologetic slice of life - not the way we'd wish it or the way Hollywood would have us believe it - but the way it is. Depressing - maybe - but there is also strength and nobility in the grit of real people confronting real adversities and struggling, or failing, to simply survive. This is tough stuff, but in its own way powerful and, if not redeeming, certainly memorable. But if all of these psychological mumbo jumbo ramblings of desperation are still putting you off - take heart. For at it's core, "Voices" is simply a darn good mystery wrapped around a cleverly inventive - if sad - plot. So if you want smiley, happy, beautiful people obsessed with fashion trends and trendy relationships, fire up the tube and surf over to the "Friends" re-runs. But if noir served up cold is your midnight snack, let the cagey Mr. Indridason take you on this tour of Iceland you'll never find in the travelogues.
Top reviews from other countries
The plot is based around Erlendur, Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg attempting to solve the murder of a former Icelandic child star who, now an adult, has been found murdered in compromising circumstances in a basement room of a Reykjavík hotel. The story, as gripping and original as the two previous in the series, doesn't venture out into the landscape of Iceland like the previous two novels, but rather stays, for the most part, inside the confines of the hotel. This allows for character development, which was weak in the first and improving in the second, to take centre stage, which benefits those who are fans of the likes of Mankell, Nesbo and Larsson as we start to get more than a basic idea of why Erlendur lives a dysfunctional life, like so many of the main characters in this genre.
Overall, a good read that builds upon the strong start made in Jar City and Silence of the Grave.
しかし男はステージ上突然「声を失い」、栄華の頂点から一気に転落し父の期待を裏切ったのだった。しかし彼からすれば、父はそれまで彼がしたいことは何一つさせず、友達もなく、「彼の子供時代を奪った」のだ。しかレコードを2枚出すほどの美しいボーソプラノの持ち主であった彼が、声が出なくなったという事実とともに、家を出なくてはならなくなった彼の秘密が次第に明らかになる。この秘密こそ、彼が住まいにしていた地下室で無残な姿で殺されたことにつながっているのだ。
父の期待を背負った息子のそれをかなえられない悲しみが一つの主題となり、そこにアイスランドの抱える貧困、麻薬、児童虐待の問題をおりまぜながら、物語は進行する。
さらにエーレンデュル警部シリーズの第'1作『湿地』から描かれている、警部自身の抱えるトラウマ、麻薬から抜け出そうともがく娘との関わりが所々に挿入され、捜査の進展への興味もさることながら、人が抱える言い知れぬ悲しみに心動かされる。
ミステリーの範疇を超えた人間ドラマがここにある。