She Treads Softly: The Lost House

Thursday, December 19, 2024

The Lost House

The Lost House by Melissa Larsen
1/14/25; 352 pages
Minotaur/St. Martin's Press

The Lost House by Melissa Larsen is a recommended Nordic Noir set in a small Icelandic town.

Agnes Glin accepts the invitation of true crime podcaster Nora Carver and travels to Iceland to discuss her family history and clear her grandfather's name. Forty years ago her grandfather Einar Palsson was suspected of killing his wife and infant daughter. Never charged with the crime, her grandfather along with his son fled the small town of Bifröst, Iceland, and moved to California. Now Agnes, who has spent a year recovering from a crushed leg and her grandfather's death, has agreed to talk to Nora in anticipation of clearing her grandfather's name.

Just two days before Agnes arrives, a young college student named Ása has gone missing and is presumed dead. There are posters up of the missing girl and search parties looking for her body. This new case provides another mystery for Nora and Agnes to investigate and look into while questioning if it could be tied into the murder from forty years ago.

Without a doubt the Icelandic winter landscape looms large as a character in this slow-paced, atmospheric mystery. Agnes is a very introspective character. She is flawed, hurting, and wounded, but is a fully realized character. In many ways her trip to Iceland is also a search of self-discovery and we spend a lot of time in her head. Nora and the other characters that cross her path are interesting.

The writing is good and along with the frozen setting does create a haunting, eerie atmosphere mystery and works well with the true crime tie-in. The measure, slow-pace was okay at the start, but the lethargic gait continued on much too long. It perhaps didn't help that I predicted the direction the narrative was heading.

This would be a good choice for those who would enjoy an atmospheric mystery with a slow-moving narrative. Thanks to Minotaur/St. Martin's Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.