En una antigua zona de marismas de la capital islandesa, aparece flotando en un estanque el cadáver de un vagabundo. Como a casi nadie le importa su muerte, la policía archiva rápidamente el caso. Un problema menos. Sin embargo, un joven agente llamado Erlendur, que conocía al mendigo de sus rondas por el corazón de la ciudad, empieza a obsesionarse con las circunstancias del trágico suceso. Hay varios detalles que indican que no se trató de un simple accidente y Erlendur tiene la firme convicción de que todos merecen justicia.

Interesting prequel to the popular Inspector Erlendur series. The young policeman investigates two murders on his own time and wins th interest of the highest-up.
The story is good, has a few of the classic breaking the fourth wall inside jokes, but overall is not as taut as other works by this author. Enjoyable read for a winter's night... ( )

Enjoyable but the mystery part was slightly predictable. It was interesting to find out how Erlunder and Hallidor first got together though! ( )

I am a fan of the gloomy, haunted Icelandic detective Erlendur, so Reykjavik Nights went straight onto my reading list when it was published.

In this prequel we meet Erlendur as a young uniformed patrolman, working the night shift. As the story starts, he is called to the scene of an accident where a tramp has drowned. When Erlendur pulls out the body, he recognises Hannibal, a vagrant that he has encountered on the streets before. As he looks into how Hannibal met his end, the plot thickens.

Erlendur is already the taciturn loner that we know well, and his obsession with missing persons is clear, and it is this that draws him deeper into the case.

Indridason has been playing around with his formula recently, shifting the focus between different members of the team, relocating the action and now writing a prequel. I think that this has delivered mixed results, with the strongest of his recent novels being Strange Shores, which was probably closest to his older style anyway. Given what has gone before in this series, I can only rate this one as average.

P.S. Interesting to note Indridason giving a tip of his hat to Sjowall and Wahloo, by having Erlendur reading The Laughing Policeman. An acknowledgment of an early inspiration, perhaps? ( )

Erlendur est nouveau dans la police et y effectue des veilles. Entre bagarres, cambriolages et violences conjugales, il tente d’élucider la mort d’un clochard auquel il s’est attaché. Le préquel de la série est un roman sociétal plus que policier, nocturne et nostalgique, lent et empathique. ( )