Reykjavík

Jónasson, a translator of Agatha Christie mysteries, teams up with Icelandic prime minister Jakobsdóttir for a thrilling Scandinavian noir inspired by a real-life cold case. In 1956, a 15-year-old housemaid named Lára vanishes from the only inhabited house on Videy, a small island off the coast of Reykjavík. Infrequent media inquires into her disappearance prove fruitless until 1986, when Valur Róbertsson, an ambitious young journalist, sees Lára's case as a potentially career-making story. Just after Valur receives a compelling scoop, he's pushed in front of a bus and dies, and his grief-stricken younger sister, Sunna, takes over the investigation. Building on her brother's reporting, she discovers that a cabal including a judge, a real estate developer, a councilman, and a newspaper editor has been concealing a terrible secret central to Lára's disappearance. Jónasson has clearly learned a thing or two from Christie's trademark tight plotting and penetrating characterizations, and Jakobsdóttir's insider knowledge of Iceland's halls of power lend the proceedings an air of authenticity. Fans of Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole series will be rapt. (Sept.)

The search for answers about a missing schoolgirl takes 30 years to pay off. Fifteen-year-old Lára Marteinsdóttir, who'd contracted to work the summer of 1956 as a domestic helper for former Supreme Court of Iceland barrister Óttar Óskarsson and his wife, Ólöf Blöndal, in their retreat on the little island of Videy, announces one morning that she's packed her bags and is leaving early to rejoin her parents in Reykjavík. The couple are jolted by her early departure, but her parents are far more jolted when she never shows up. Since not many young women go missing in Iceland, the case, first investigated by police officer Kristján Kristjánsson, swiftly becomes a cause célèbre, but that doesn't lead to a solution--not in 1956, not in 1966, not in 1976. It's not until 1986, on the eve of Reykjavík's 200th anniversary, that Valur Róbertsson, a promising reporter for the struggling weekly Vikubladid, gets a phone call from someone calling herself Julía that so whets his interest in the case that he keeps overpromising developments to editor Dagbjartur Steinsson, who in turn pushes him harder and harder and even leaks a wildly premature announcement of his upcoming scoop to other news outlets. Valur focuses on a quartet of old friends--Óskarsson himself, city councillor Páll Jóhannesson, developer Högni Eyfjörd, and wholesaler Finnur Stephensen, whose dying words to his actress wife were "You have to go to Videy"--who regularly met on the island. When Valur is unable to deliver the goods, his sister, Sunna Róbertsdóttir, puts her dissertation in comparative literature on hold and takes over the investigation just as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev announce their plans to meet in Reykjavík for their historic summit. A slow-burning, spellbinding whodunit. Agatha Christie, to whom it's dedicated, would be proud. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.