NORTH ATLANTIC BOOKS, CONT’D.

Finally, I found the nugget in Jar City. The Icelandic database of genealogy and medical history played a part in the story. Remember the good article about it in The New Yorker some years ago? The question, as I recall, was whether Iceland should license this amazing unbroken record of Viking descendants and their medical histories for genetic research by others or keep it and the privacy of those in it for Iceland’s use. I love this. Whereas others follow the money to solve life’s mysteries, I follow the information, and this database is one huge treasure of applicable information. This has nothing to do with Roseledge Books’ customers.

This database excitement lasted long enough for me to start Indridason’s follow up novel, Silence of the Grave. If possible, it is bleaker than Jar City, but I am learning, through Erlendur’s “activities of daily living” (a nurse term) about Reykjavik. Find a buried skeleton, and the police ask if the bones are Viking bones as a matter of course. They don’t ask about Irish bones, at least not to p. 100.

Also, in this second novel, Inspector Erlendur continues reading about “Icelandic missing person scenario[s]” and applies his reading to his work which thoroughly confuses his colleagues (p. 97). I love knowing why someone chooses to read, then use, a particular book or topic.

Then, on p. 229, a little nugget! (I’m working out nugget categories.) He mentions Minneapolis, my winter home. That I live in both Minneapolis and Maine is not enough of a tie to warrant a sure place on Roseledge Books’ shelves, but it’s fun to find and I love living both places.

Indridason, Arnaldur. Silence of the Grave (Reykjavik Murder Mysteries, No. 2). New York: Picador, 2002.