Skip to main content

The Flatey Enigma (Victor Ingolfsson) finished

spoiler alert ** An odd little mystery that serves as an excuse to introduce readers to even odder bits of Icelandic lore. It took me a while to get in the spirit of the book, but I'm glad I stuck with it. A real spoiler is coming. 
The idea of a "murderer" living on this tiny Icelandic island where everyone knows everyone else seemed impossible. I was curious how Ingolfsson would pull it off. Ingenious. The victim was murdered by being left to starve on a deserted island in the winter. Who left him? Our victim cajoled an old fisherman to take him to the island. He didn't know the fisherman suffered from dementia. Our fisherman dropped him off, waited a while, forgot all about the victim, and sailed back home, sealing the visitor's fate. Very clever and satisfying.

 The Flatey book does exist and was returned by the Danes to Iceland.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Puppy, Story by George Saunders

PUPPY  Dysfunctional family has puppy that they need to get rid of.  Mom places ad; family is coming over. Description of family.   Mom:  husband changed from long-haired attractive to stooped old man. Husband: talks constantly of living on a farm and doing what needs to be done, though he never lived on a farm.   Conversations together:   Sell and move to Arizona, get hooked on phonics for kids, buying a car wash. . . wonderful randomness. Straight-laced suburbanite comes to look at puppy.  Seems like she will buy it, even though she is repelled by house.  (Dog turds on carpet, filthy.) She is proud of how accepting she is until she looks out window and sees white trash's son tied by harness to a tree.  Reader knows he is a menace to himself, darting across I-90, for example.  Suburban mother beats hasty retreat, leaving dog to be (probably) drowned by dad who does what has to be done.   Suburbanite remembers her own pathetic ch...
Post a Comment
Read more

Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler

Bryant & May--Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery, Book 1 Lots that I liked.  Crime novel that is also historical fiction.  Fowler gives insight into London during the blitz.  Danger from street cars, some looting during blackout, stiff upper lip British still going to theaters, etc.  Fowler also takes reader backstage into the workings of a theater.  I learned a lot about the physical complexity of a major theater--production is a tremendous production.  I liked both the main characters.  Bryant, the eccentric loner who thinks out of the box. May, the more traditional "bright" guy, who is able to appreciate Bryant and help by keeping him in the real world, a little. Plot revolves around murders committed while cast rehearses and then performs Offenbach's scandalous version of Orpheus and Eurydice.  The murders are on the gruesome-detail side given the general British coolness of the rest of the text.  Spoiler coming.  The denouement wa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sorcerer, Movie 2.5 stars

Roy Scheider, based on Wages of Fear. Scheider is involved in a robbery in USA.  He robs a church connected to the mob--the mob puts out a contract to kill him.  He flees to Nicaragua.  Poor, miserable . . . and a contract killer shows up.  He takes his chance--driving a cargo of plastic explosives over a mountain to put out an oil well fire. His would-be killer, though a series of events, becomes his co-driver.  The other truck has a Frenchman involved in a financial scheme who has had to flee France. He, too, needs money to get out of the miserable little town. Driving the trucks is the focus of last half of movie.  Explosion at every turn is possible.  Frenchman and his co-driver blow up when wheel comes off.  Scheider's co-driver killed by bandits (Scheider and he have become respectful of one another.) Scheider carries the explosives in. He will get 40,000 pesos.  He's about to fly out of the little town, with some hope, when a car...
Post a Comment
Read more