You Can’t see Me

By Eva Björg Ægisdóttir @evaaegisdottir

Translated by Victoria Cribb

Published by Orenda Books https://orendabooks.co.uk/ @OrendaBooks

404 pages ISBN 9781914585722

Publication date 6 July 2023

You Can’t See Me is a prequel to the Forbidden Iceland series featuring Detective Elma. Click on the link to read my review of Night Shadows the third book in the series.

I was sent an electronic copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and the Publisher.

The Cover

A girl on a windswept desolate landscape with what looks like a church in the background. Quite evocative and very much in keeping with the previous covers in the series.

From the blurb

The wealthy, powerful Snæberg clan has gathered for a family reunion at a futuristic hotel set amongst the dark lava flows of Iceland’s remote Snæfellsnes peninsula.

Petra Snæberg, a successful interior designer, is anxious about the event, and her troubled teenage daughter, Lea, whose social media presence has attracted the wrong kind of followers. Ageing carpenter Tryggvi is an outsider, only tolerated because he’s the boyfriend of Petra’s aunt, but he’s struggling to avoid alcohol because he knows what happens when he drinks … Humble hotel employee, Irma, is excited to meet this rich and famous family and observe them at close quarters … perhaps too close…

As the weather deteriorates and the alcohol flows, one of the guests disappears, and it becomes clear that there is a prowler lurking in the dark.

But is the real danger inside … within the family itself?

My thoughts

This novel is a modern twist on the country house hotel mystery so beloved of the classic era. Instead of a bunch of apparent strangers assembled together, whose intersecting pasts are only revealed once the bodies start to fall, this is a weekend get together and reunion of a rich and famous family with partners. It is their shared past and differing memories of events that prove important to the story. The setting is not a grand old house, but a new uber modern designer hotel, with the cutting-edge minimalist design that wins awards, but is also spartan, bleak and a little soulless. It is well stocked with booze though, which is a good thing because the family are prodigious drinkers, to such an extent we might wonder how they managed to become so successful. As we all know alcohol consumption and good decision making are poor bedfellows and here it provides to be no exception.

The setting is spectacular and used to perfection; the isolated landscape, the strong winds and heavy snow surrounding a stark concrete hotel, its bleak outside but cosy inside in front of a log fire. Capturing the sensation of being cut off from the rest of humanity on stormy nights but then everything being better in the bright light of a new morning with the rest of the world only a short drive away, once the snowploughs have been. Even the room controls being operated by mobile phone app adds to the ominous feeling when they seemingly malfunction one evening.

The story telling perspective is an interesting one as there is no central defining character. The narrative is in the first person but is told from several viewpoints, mostly female ones, and is constantly switching. Incidents from the past are revisited and this approach means that the facts as seen from different people are established gradually and the full story pieced together only towards the end. Even the role of the police within it are somewhat peripheral and more of a cameo. I love short chapters and a quickly switching narrative to bring a sense of urgency and danger but too much can be a little jarring for the reader, and I confess to being a little distracted at times. Perhaps I am getting a little bit old and jaded.

The characterisation is simply wonderful, managing to incorporate so many loathsome traits within one family. To name but a few, on top of the drunkenness there is; vanity, adultery, sexual predatory behaviour, sloth, psychological hurt and manipulation to go with all the profligate spending. The New Order album title Power, Corruption and Lies springs to mind as a succinct description as there is not a likeable one amongst them and the reader must look to the hotel staff for empathetic characters. Of their partners the carpenter Tryggvi at least appears to have some compassion, but he is only tolerated at best and looked down upon for being lower class and a manual worker too. Even here appearances can be deceptive. If great wealth makes you like this family, I might need to reconsider my desire for a big lottery win, well at least for a few moments.

The story is very tightly plotted and gives away its secrets slowly. It is established almost from the start that there is a body found in a nearby ravine, and by the isolation of the hotel it is likely to be either a guest or an employee. The identity of the victim, whose body cannot be quickly recovered, is left tantalisingly unclear to the reader. Without this fact it becomes difficult to pin down a suspect and motive. Once on this hook you are gradually reeled in like a prized salmon fit for the table of the Snæberg’s gala dinner. Gradually the jigsaw pieces come together, and the picture becomes clearer, but it might not be quite what was envisaged and will keep most guessing to the very end.

In You Can’t See Me sins from the past and family secrets are exposed and confronted in a bleak desolate landscape. Just what you would come to expect from the best Icelandic Noir.

You Can’t See Me can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Born in Akranes in 1988, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland to write her first novel. Combining writing with work as a stewardess and caring for her children, Eva finished her debut thriller The Creak on the Stairs, which was published in 2018. It became a bestseller in Iceland, going on to win the Blackbird Award. Published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, it became a digital number-one betseller in three countries, was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories and won the CWA John Creasey Dagger in 2021. Girls Who Lie, the second book in the Forbidden Iceland series was shortlisted for the Petrona Award and the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, and Night Shadows followed suit. With over 200,000 copies sold in English alone, Eva has become one of Iceland’s – and crime fiction’s – most highly regarded authors. She lives in Reyjavik with her husband and three children.

The translator

Victoria Cribb studied and worked in Iceland for many years. She has translated more than 25 novels from the Icelandic and, in 2017, she received the Orðstír honourary translation award for services to Icelandic literature.

Don’t forget to look out for the previous reviews on this Blog Tour: