Review: White As Snow, by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, trs. Quentin Bates

Blurb

On a snowy winter morning, an abandoned shipping container is discovered near Reykjavík. Inside are the bodies of five young women – one of them barely alive.

As Icelandic Police detective Daníel struggles to investigate the most brutal crime of his career, Áróra looks into the background of a suspicious man, who turns out to be engaged to Daníel’s former wife, and the connections don’t stop there…

Daníel and Áróra’s cases pit them both against ruthless criminals with horrifying agendas, while Áróra persists with her search for her missing sister, Ísafold, whose devastating disappearance continues to haunt her.

As the temperature drops and the 24-hour darkness and freezing snow hamper their efforts, their investigations become increasingly dangerous … for everyone.

My Review

Thanks to Anne Cater for organising this tour and to Karen at Orenda for sending me a copy of this book. You’re a generous person to this reviewer! I do enjoy Lilja’s books.

We pick up the story not long after the end of Red As Blood, with Daniel and Arora struggling to work out what they are to each other, Helena continuing her relationship with the questionable Sirra, and Sergei the giant Russian thug back in the picture. This time, he’s living with Daniel’s first ex-wife, Elin. Iceland, being the small place it is, and with everyone being related to each other (Elin is also Arora’s dad’s first cousin), cases get complicated. When a shipping container is found with four dead women and a barely alive one in it, the interconnections are useful and dangerous.

Helena takes centre stage as the liaison for the survivor, Bisi. Struggling with the horror of the case and desperate to get justice for Bisi, Helena allows herself to become close to the woman. Slowly she draws out the horrifying story of the journey in the shipping container and Bisi’s unexpected survival, but she’s haunted by what she learns.

Daniel deals with the investigation just as his kids visiting from Denmark. As the first CID officer to enter the container and the one to find Bisi alive he is expected to lead, but is too traumatised to, so takes a step back, relying on Helena to assist in liaison with Bisi, assuming she’d be more comfortable with a woman, and does what he can around looking after his children. He relies ever more on his tenant Lady Gugulu for support and feels guilty for asking Arora to help Elin, especially after their last conversation.

Arora is looking into Elin’s partner Sergei, who is all too familiar to Arora. It’s just a background check, but Elin’s spur of the moment decision to leave her phone recording helps to break open the human trafficking case. Between Arora, Daniel, Ari Benz (international department) and Elin they discover just how evil Sergei truly is. The cases link together a small crime ring that Arora has been after since she arrived in Iceland.

Bisi meanwhile is learning to trust Helena and discloses a few secrets; the reason she was in France, the trafficking gang in France, lead by a dodgy woman called Fifi, and why she can’t go back to Lagos – she’s a lesbian and her flat has been destroyed by her father and brother, her partner forced back to her dangerous home village and threats to Bisi’s life if she ever returns. Suella Braverman might not think fear of persecution for being Queer is a reason to give people asylum, but they do in a civilised country like Iceland.

The story is about human trafficking, but the relationships that are at the centre of the novel make it compelling (if the human trafficking plot isn’t compelling enough). Lilja always tackles a ‘big’ subject in these Arora novels – domestic violence, organised crime – but it is the relationships and their developments that keep me reading.

The most confusing relationship, if you haven’t read the earlier books is the one between Helena and Daniel. They’re close co-workers and friends, but the way it’s written could be mistaken for a romantic relationship. Helena would be appalled that anyone would think she’d have a relationship with a man! She’s in a complicated relationship with a lawyer named Sirra, thank you very much. She’s not entirely certain about it either. The commitment of being given a key to Sirra’s place has got her scared. I think by the end of the novel, after learning about Bisi’s experiences in Lagos, and the situation that made her vulnerable to human traffickers, Helena has come to terms with the changing relationship and sees it in a different light.

I love the relationship between Daniel and Lady Gugulu; they are becoming great friends and the trust between them, especially as Lady looks after his children frequently during the investigation, is strong. I love that when the children ask if Lady is their step-father or step-mother Daniel’s first thought is to correct that they’re friends not partners and then go with whatever Lady decides (step-mother). Because Lady Gugulu is his friend and her gender is her business. She’s also a very handy babysitter, since she lives in the converted garage in his garden.

The relationship between Daniel and Arora is complicated. He was married to her dad’s cousin, he remembers her as a child, she remembers him and Elin as a young couple at family events. There are complicated feelings involved. This is Iceland, the tiny norther nation where they have an app to check how closely related people are to each other. It must have happened a few times. Doesn’t stop it being complicated and confusing for both of them. Their stuttering relationship is fun to read and tense as the reader is left wondering will they or won’t they finally sort themselves out.

The tiny details, like the genealogy app and the way shipping containers are marked, and customs like taking off your shoes at the door, give this book a ring of authenticity. Lilja notices the little things, normal background stuff, that added to a story brings realism. I liked the little markers of character in each person – Daniel’s jeans, Helena’s suits, Leonid’s attempts at being more than he is, Ari’s continuously changing name – that tells us more that the simple facts about the person.

I read this book one rainy afternoon in September while I had a disgusting cold and two visiting Shih Tzu’s who are used to constant attention. They just had to tolerate getting less attention while I was immersed in the investigation. When’s the next one?

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ABOUT LILJA SIGURÐARDÓTTIR

Bestselling crime-writer Lilja Sigurðardóttir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written ten crime novels, including Snare, Trap and Cage, making up the Reykjavík Noir trilogy, and her standalone thriller Betrayal, all of which have hit bestseller lists worldwide and been long- and shortlisted for multiple awards. The film rights for the Reykjavík Noir trilogy have been bought by Palomar Pictures in California.

Cold as Hell, the first book in the An Áróra Investigation series, was published in the UK in 2021 and reprinted twice, and was followed by Red as Blood, a number-one digital bestseller. Lilja lives outside of Reykjavík with her partner and a brood of chickens.