Book Review: THE RECKONING by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Title: The Reckoning

Author: Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Read: November 2018

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

A chilling note predicting the deaths of six people is found in a school's time capsule, ten years after it was buried. But surely, if a thirteen-year-old wrote it, it can't be a real threat...

Detective Huldar suspects he's been given the investigation simply to keep him from real police work. He turns to psychologist Freyja to help understand the child who hid the message. Soon, however, they find themselves at the heart of another shocking case.

For the discovery of the letter coincides with a string of macabre events: body parts found in a garden, followed by the murder of the man who owned the house. His initials are BT, one of the names on the note.

Huldar and Freyja must race to identify the writer, the victims and the murderer, before the rest of the targets are killed...

My musings:

Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s Children’s House series has been my most exciting discovery in 2018, and I fully expect to become totally addicted to future books in the series. It is so good that I picked up The Reckoning immediately after turning the last page of The Legacy because I had to find out what would become of investigative duo Freyja and Huldar.

Sigurdardottir again delivers an intriguing and somewhat creepy premise – a time capsule sealed at a local school ten years ago has now been opened, containing a list of names that predicts the death of several people in 2016. Huldar, demoted to solve minor crimes after his massive fall from grace in The Legacy, has been tasked with finding out who would write such a dark and sinister letter, and must investigate whether this has been a prank or whether there is any danger of harm befalling the people named in the list. And since the letter had allegedly been written by a young boy at the time, none would be better to help solve the mystery than child psychologist Freyja, who specialises in disturbed and traumatised children. Even though Freyja herself is still suffering the consequences of their last doomed partnership and is less than eager to be involved in yet another one of Huldar’s troublesome investigations. Of course, it doesn’t take long until the first body turns up, and Huldar finds himself once more involved in the sinister game of a ruthless killer.

It’s no secret that I like my crime novels dark and disturbing, and Sigurdadottir is a true queen of the creepy and haunting.  The Children’s House series is not for the faint of heart, as both books feature some disturbing themes, in this case hints at horrific acts of child abuse and quite gruesome murder scenes. However, Sigurdardottir’s writing style strikes exactly the right balance between too lurid on one end of the spectrum or too nebulous and glossing over at the other, so that the scenes can play out vividly without crossing the line that would turn suspense into revulsion - and still maintain the shock value I have come to expect from books in the genre. As in The Legacy, the final reveal took me by surprise and showed how cleverly constructed this mystery really was. Personally, my favourite part of the book was to learn more about Freyja and Huldar’s lives, as I have become quite fond of these two flawed but lovable characters.  

Short of being able to learn to speak Icelandic anytime soon, I will have to comfort myself with the promise of an English translation of part three in the series coming out in 2019. I, for one, will surely be lining up for it, because Freyja and Huldar have really gotten under my skin and I am eager to learn more about yet another case they can hopefully solve together. In the meantime, I am making my way through some of Sigurdatottir’s other books, happy that there is a long backlist to choose from. If you are a fan of Nordic noir with dark and disturbing undertones, then I strongly urge you to pick this one up!