Snowblind

Product Information

We are on the threshold of human interchange here, speech, verbal commerce along the barren avenues of Quaalude City. Communication at this level, although sophisticated in its own way, can best be described as haphazard. It is a kind of space-age remodeling of traditional counterintelligence techniques - scrambled messages, predistorted transmissions, sympathetically programmed transceivers - a kind of mojo cryptography which contains no universal cipher and is efficient only when two people are doing the same kind of dope." Sweeping Nordic landscapes, snowstorm-induced claustrophobia, and a cast of characters reminiscent of Agatha Christie: Ragnar Jónasson's debut mystery meets all my requirements for a moody, engrossing Nordic Nordic noir read. I have been waiting to read Ragnar's Dark Iceland series for ages now, and my first foray into this rising star's works exceeded my expectations, and as a bonus, now has me itching to visit Iceland and explore Siglufjordur! Thanks to Ragnar for sending me so many gorgeous pictures of his hometown—I hope you'll enjoy the photos interspersed throughout this review!

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read. PRESSAN, ICELAND. “Few crime writers have made such a strong entrance into the Icelandic literary market. Ragnar is already making his way abroad. It should be celebrated, that not only the two towers, Yrsa [Sigurdardottir] and Arnaldur [Indridason] know the art of writing a good crime story.” - Kristjón Kormákur, Pressan.is review on SNOWBLINDWDR 5 - SCALA / „Bloody yet quiet portrait of a snowed-in Icelandic sea village, homely and gloomy at the same time.“ – Ingrid Müller-Münch, WDR 5 Scala, 22.11.2011 on SNOWBLIND Only, ehh. I think the idea behind this one is better than the actual execution of it. I liked it, it was good, but not great. I never really connected with any of the characters and I felt that there was just too much non-horror filler for my tastes. I get that Golden was trying to show us Small Town America, and get us to be horrified at the prospect of these nice (and some not so nice) people being murdered by swirling snow creatures, but the build up was so long that rather than creating a sense of "Oh no! I really hope nothing happens to this character!" I experienced more of an "Is nothing happening at all?" feeling for most of the middle of the book. The action bookends this dull middle section that gives a lot of character details, but still doesn't really work to make me care all that much about them.

The lead character of the Dark Iceland series is Ari Thor, a twenty-something year old rookie detective that has just been posted to the town of Siglufjörour. Siglufjörour is a small town on the mountains near the Arctic Circle where everyone knows everyone. Isolated and only accessible through a dark tunnel bored into the mountain, it makes for a great setting for noir crime novel series. FRÉTTABLAÐIÐ, ICELAND / “A well constructed, well stylized and exciting mystery with good characterization and a solution which is a complete surprise to the reader.” - Friðrika Benónýsdóttir, Fréttablaðið newspaper review on SNOWBLIND I was highly anticipating reading Snowblind this year. I've been a fan of Christopher Golden for a long time, and it has been a while since he's released a new horror book. When I heard Snowblind was going to be released, I immediately placed it on my must read list.You'd expect a book about cocaine to be, if nothing else, exciting, and Snowblind is, occasionally, very exciting, but it's also a bitch to read. This was first published in 1976 and has not dated particularly well. The main reason why, and the book's biggest flaw, in my opinion, is the author's unabashed enthusiasm for the story (not the drug or the business) though it has to be said, an enthusiasm that is considerably more restraint than Howard Mark's excruciating introduction.