Review: Thirty Days Of Darkness, by Jenny Lund Madsen, Translated by Megan E. Turney

Blurb

A snobbish Danish literary author is challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days, travelling to a small village in Iceland for inspiration, and then the first body appears…

Copenhagen author Hannah is the darling of the literary community and
her novels have achieved massive critical acclaim. But nobody actually
reads them, and frustrated by writer’s block, Hannah has the feeling that
she’s doing something wrong.

When she expresses her contempt for genre fiction, Hanna is publicly
challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days. Scared that she will lose
face, she accepts, and her editor sends her to Húsafjörður – a quiet,
tight-knit village in Iceland, filled with colourful local characters – for
inspiration.

But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman’s young son is
pulled from the water … and what begins as a search for plot material
quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to
uncover secrets that put everything at risk … including Hannah.

My Review

Thanks to the good people at Orenda Books for my copy of this novel and for organising this blog tour.

This book follows Hannah, a Danish author of ‘poetic novellas’, who gets into an argument with a crime writer at a book fair and is challenged to write a crime novel in a month. Hannah is, quite frankly, a snob. With an alcohol problem. And writers block.

Her editor, Bastian, books her a flight to Iceland and sends her to stay with his friend Ella in the south eastern town of Husafjordur (sorry, I can’t do a ‘thorn’ on this keyboard) for a month. Hannah doesn’t want to do it, but decides to go anyway.

Once in Iceland, she still struggles to write. Until there’s a murder. Her hostesses nephew, Thor. There’s something going on in small town Iceland, secrets and lies to be uncovered. Hannah, struggling to understand Icelandic (no one will speak English or Danish around her), starts to investigate Thor’s murder, and meets the local police officer, Viktor, and his wife, Margret. She also meets the local bartender and a former Stanford professor who lives on the streets. In the process of helping to investigate the crime, Hannah falls in love and writes the first draft of the crime novel.

I did not like Hannah when I started reading the novel, she’s a snob, obsessively self-involved but without self-awareness, ignorant but refusing to accept her ignorance. Her arrogance is off-putting. And she writes the sort of pretentious literary fiction no one actually reads but everyone says they have.

However, her character flaws instigate the drama; she gets so angry at a crime writer talking about the realities of publishing, that popular genre fiction that pays the bills allows publishers to finance the literary stuff that doesn’t make a profit for anyone, that she throws a book at him. How undignified and ‘common’!

I was on page 83 when I really got into the book, something happened that made me very invested in finding out what happened next. The hints of secrets – we learn that Hannah is bisexual and that the murder victim might have been killed by his boyfriend. Or his father, who is monstrously homophobic. What other secrets are hiding in Husfjordur?

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I wrote the first part of this review once I got home from work today (Thursday). I was only a third of the way through the book and wanted to get something written. Four hours later, I’ve finished the book. It was gripping.

As a snow storm closes in on Hannah and Ella, and more attacks happen, Ella warns Hannah to stop investigating or go back to Denmark. The community of Husafjordur is full of secrets and they’re very reluctant to open up to the stranger from Denmark, especially if Hannah’s going to use them as inspiration fodder.

Hannah’s nemesis Jorn, the crime writer, comes to Iceland and his involvement becomes critical to the eventual resolution of events. I actually thought it was him for a while and that he was inserting himself into the investigation for quite a lot of the book, almost to the end, when he got shot by the really murderer.

You really won’t expect the murderer, or the trigger for the murders in the first place, an event that place almost sixty years before Hannah even arrives in Husfjordur.

Hannah also falls in love over the month the novel takes place, and learns some self-awareness. The development of the relationships in the novel, between Hannah and Ella, Hannah and Margret, Hannah and Jorn, Hannah and Viktor, and the way the community is forced to take responsibility for their refusal to help Ella in the past and deal with Aegir, reflect Hannah’s personal development as she leans into the community and friendships she builds, the cracking of her shell of loneliness and false sense of superiority.

I would only suggest throwing in a few more clues about the murderer. It really did come out of the blue. The clues weren’t evident. But as Jorn tells Hannah, the murderer must be someone nobody expects at all.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, I look forward to reading more from Jenny Lund Madsen.

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ABOUT JENNY LUND MADSEN

Jenny Lund Madsen is one of Denmark’s most acclaimed scriptwriters (including the international hits Rita and Follow the Money) and is known as an advocate for better representation for sexual and ethnic minorities in Danish TV and film. She recently made her debut as a playwright with the critically acclaimed Audition (Aarhus Teater) and her debut literary thriller, Thirty Days of Darkness, first in an addictive new series, won the Harald Mogensen Prize for Best Danish Crime Novel of the year and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key Award. She lives in Denmark with her young family.