Title: THE ABSOLUTION
Author: Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
Read: May 2019
Read: May 2019
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2
Book Description:
The police find out about the crime the way everyone does:
on Snapchat. The video shows the terrified victim begging for forgiveness. When
her body is found, it is marked with a number 2...
Detective Huldar joins the investigation, bringing child
psychologist Freyja on board to help question the murdered teenager's friends.
Soon, they uncover that Stella was far from the angel people claim - but even
so, who could have hated her enough to kill?
Then another teenager goes missing, and more clips are sent.
Freyja and Huldar can agree on two things at least: the truth is far from
simple. And the killer is not done yet.
A brilliantly suspenseful story about the dark side of
social media, The Absolution will make you wonder what you should
have said sorry for...
My musings:
Yrsa Sigurdadottir’s Children’s House series was one of my
favourite discoveries last year, and I have been hooked ever since. It is not
for the faint of heart, seeing that Sigurdadottir is a masterful creator of
unsettling and suspenseful storylines, and – as the name suggests – all books
in the series concern children and young people.
I admit that this book was not easy reading. Tackling the
sinister topic of bullying, it touched on every parent’s worst fears. They say
that a parent is only ever as happy as their unhappiest child, so this story
made for a lot of unhappy characters, and ultimately murder. Since one of my
children had been badly bullied at school at once stage, I found the book quite
unsettling in places!
Detective Huldar and child psychologist Freya are back in
this one, and I particularly enjoyed the scenes concerning their lives and
found that they had become very familiar and dear to me, ensuring that I will
eagerly watch out for the next book in the series! Sigurdadottir also includes
a modern twist in her latest book, the inclusion of social media as a major
plot device, as the pictures of the victims as they are being abducted and
killed appear on their friends’ Snapchat accounts. Which was quite ironic in a
way, as these tools were being used by the bullies themselves to isolate and
intimidate their chosen victims. It was scary to see how easily this platform
can be used for maximum chill factor! Even though bullying is an age-old
problem that concerns every society and different age groups, modern technology
seems to have given the perpetrators new tools to torment. Even the police team
themselves were not immune to it, with homophobia rife in the department. I
love the way Sigurdadottir always manages to serve up well-researched and
intelligent thrillers that chill to the core – Icelandic noir at its best!
Whilst this book is probably the one in the series that can
most easily be read as a standalone, I feel that it would lose some of its
allure, as Huldar and Freya’s backstory is what makes this series so
irresistible for me. I found myself wishing to hear more about their lives,
which took a secondary role in the story. I eagerly look forward to the next
instalment in the series – more Huldar and Freye, please!
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