Last Rituals (Þóra Guðmundsdóttir #1)by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

I’m all about standalones, but it seems the author prefers serializations. And so I’ve had to make do with a first in series, which technically at the time of its creation is a standalone. Being a fan of Scandinavian Noir and the author, this was pretty much as good as expected. Plus pretty seasonal with Iceland being Christmas appropriate on an almost year around basis.
And Thóra Guðmundsdóttir is a proud Icelander. But, having studied abroad, and in general having had a proper first world education, she is multicultural and trilingual. And a lawyer. And a single mom. And two years single. But it is her language skills specifically that get her an unusual job when a family of a wealthy international historical scholar, who was studying in Iceland and got found dead and mutilated, hires her to double check the police findings and conduct an investigation of her own, assisted by a man who works for them. A conveniently handsome man, too. But that’s another story.
Not exactly along her professional lines of conduct, but the money’s good and Thora needs it, life’s expensive, especially now that her ex is out of the picture. And so she sets off to investigate the murder, only to find out that the more she looks the more progressively darker and stranger the case gets. Turns out the young man was obsessed with witches and their historical prosecutions and his personal interests and preferences were appropriately macabre. Not the most natural thing for a straight laced stick in the mud like Thora to wrap her brain around, but she acquires herself admirably in the end.
But she really kind of is a straight laced stick in the mud, at least until you get to know her, though to be fair her charms aren’t obvious. She’s very serious, so much so that occasional jokes come as a surprise every single time. She managed to have one of her kids very young, so now at 36 she juggles a sixteen year old and a six year old and does a pretty good job of it, busy as she is. It doesn’t do much for her love life, but who needs dating apps, when dashing coworkers are sealed and delivered right to her. There’s a very practical matter of factness to Thora that initially seems to flatten her, but in reality it’s just her Scandinavian persona and once you get used to it, you’ll find her a perfectly decent if not effusively charismatic protagonist.
The real star of the show is the plot, though. Not the murder thing itself, that was actually kind of lamentably obvious and predictable, though not overwhelmingly so. No, where the plot really
excels is in the backstory of the victim and all of his dark interests. The author’s obviously done a fair amount of research, comparing the historic prosecutions of witches of the Continental Europe and Iceland, it’s all absolutely fascinating and profoundly disturbing. She’s dabbled in supernatural before, ghost and such, and is obviously very comfortable in that territory and though it may not be the actual genre here, the elements are shining through like…I don’t know, ectoplasm at a séance?
This is, of course, a suspense thriller and a murder mystery first and foremost, but for me it was more along the lines of a really good witches story with a dead body. It works on either level and it’s very dark on every level. Plus the entire thing is infinitely improved by the location, isolated, stark and seemingly readymade for something just like this. A memorable and creepy armchair trip to Iceland and a very auspicious and enticing series first, even for a standalone reader such as myself. Recommended.