And also the mysterious case of the missing crime writer and death at the sanatorium…
So I was lucky enough to get an e-arc of the body in the bath (i wasn’t expecting to being fairly new to NetGalley/ reviewing in that I’ve only really used it the last year or so), as a longtime fan of Jónasson’s previous series (especially the Dark Iceland series) I was excited for this, but soon realised it was book 3.
A moment of kismet meant that found book 2 (the mysterious case of the missing crime writer) in my local little free library and decided it was enough to dive in and discovered that the main mystery worked as a standalone story so I needn’t have worried but also I was now invested in the series! This was because the story had two other strands along side the main mystery being investigated, that of the protagonist Helgi’s relationships – mostly a toxic ex girlfriend but also the detective he replaced when he became detective – Hulda Hermannsdottir, who I instantly recognised from the Hidden Iceland series! There is also a subtle self insert by the author IYKYK. My heart was leaping with joy at all these nuggets.
So then I had to get book 1, just to make sure I wasn’t missing any other Easter eggs. In the back of the book, it mentions an interesting tidbit about Jónasson’s previous work translating Agatha Christie and also how he spent many a day writing these books from a particular coffee shop in Reykjavik. I once spotted him in there after a swim during Airwaves and choose to believe he was writing one of these books that are now some of my favourite crime novels!
I digress, so The Body in the Bath (book 3 of the Helgi series), like the books preceding it focuses on Helgi’s almost obsession with classic crime detective novels and also gives us ‘Helgi’s reading list’ to start, all the while giving us a classic style mystery. In this book the main murder, we find out mirrors the murder in one of Helgi’s books that he just happens to be reading at the time making him a potential suspect..
But in a true classic crime style we are presented with many options for who the killer could be and yet again I am completely blindsided by the actual killer! Also we still don’t know what happened to Hulda!
Amazing, there has to be a book 4 right?
Yes I superimposed the actual cover onto my kindle because e-arcs don’t have the proper cover. No it isn’t perfect because I didn’t use AI instead I used my sausage fingers and Canva on a phone.
