Last Rituals (Thóra Gudmundsdóttir 1) by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

Icelandic sorcery…

😀 😀 😀 😀 🙂

The head of the History Department at the University in Reykjavik is shocked enough when he opens a cupboard in his room early one morning only for a corpse to tumble out and land on him. But when it turns out the corpse is one of the department’s students and has been gruesomely mutilated, his shock, and that of the cleaning staff who run to his aid, turns to horror. Harald Guntlieb was a young German student specialising in the history of German witch trials who had come to Reykjavik on a student exchange programme to make a comparative study of how witches had been treated in Iceland. Highly intelligent, but troubled and strange, Harald was also delving into the subject of witchcraft and sorcery, and the combination of his wealth and odd charisma had gathered around him a little group of friends who shared his fascination for the subject. When the autopsy shows that he has had a magic symbol carved into his chest, it seems that his death may be connected to his interest in sorcery.

The police quickly decide on a suspect – a drug dealer who kept Harald and his friends well supplied – and charge him with the crime. But Harald’s parents don’t believe they’ve got the right person, and hire local lawyer Thóra Gudmundsdóttir to work with their own security man, a German called Matthew Reich, to investigate the murder on their behalf.

Despite the mutilations and the subject of witchcraft and witch trials, this isn’t nearly as grim and dark as that little blurb makes it sound. Sigurdardóttir doesn’t shy away from the gruesome bits, but nor does she dwell on them unduly. The result is that the book is shivery rather than disturbing. It’s written in the third person, past tense, although told firmly from Thóra’s perspective throughout, and there’s a lot of humour in the growing relationship of Thóra and Matthew to keep the overall tone light. Sigurdardóttir also manages to pack in a load of history about the Icelandic Reformation and resulting witch trials without it feeling too much like an info dump – for the most part she keeps it focused on what is needed for the plot and she works it through the story interestingly.

Book 1 of 14

Thóra is a likeable main character. She’s in her late thirties, with two children – a boy of 16 and a girl of 6 – whom she shares with her ex-husband, though she has main custody. Despite being busy with a full-time job and the stresses of single parenthood, she’s delightfully angst-free. She doesn’t regret her divorce nor seem particularly bitter over it, and now, two years on, she’s beginning to think it might be nice to have a romantic life again. At work she has a partner who really doesn’t appear much in this one, and a truly dreadful secretary, Bella, whom they can’t sack because she’s the daughter of their landlord. Bella also adds to the humour, though I must admit it didn’t take long for that joke to wear thin, and by the end of the book I was finding her tiresome as a character. Matthew starts out as rather cold and serious, but he warms up quickly and becomes a fun sparring partner for Thóra. Their banter is done very well and meant that their inevitable romantic attraction felt credible – quick, yes, but not the dreaded instalove!

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

The investigation mainly centres around Harald’s friends, and they’re a rather unpleasant bunch. Academic ambition plays its part too, and Sigurdardóttir gives a good picture of the lengths historians might go to in pursuit of a piece of evidence to back their pet theory, or sometimes for fame and fortune. As the story progresses we learn more about Harald’s family and childhood, and that casts some light on his character flaws. The plot itself is complex, and I felt that it occasionally got a little too convoluted. Unless I missed some fairly major clues, I’d have to say it’s not fair play and it seemed to me the solution came out of the blue quite abruptly at the end. That aspect is probably the book’s one weakness, but the rest of it was so enjoyable that it didn’t bother me too much.

I’ve had a mixed reaction to Sigurdardóttir in the past – I always admire her writing and style, but sometimes she gets too dark and graphic for me. This is the second Thóra book I’ve read, the other being much later in the series, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them both – they seem to me to be at the lighter end of Sigurdardóttir’s range and that suits me perfectly. I look forward to reading more in the series.

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