The Icelandic Unknown

"All she had to show for the day's labours were the bones in the desk drawers and the photograph of the frozen hand. Thora drifted off to sleep wondering how long a corpse could stay suspended in ice."
With all the fuss over the year's top ten or hundred bestsellers, a few really good new releases have slipped in all but unnoticed. Yrsa Sigurdardottir is an Icelandic author who's finally coming into her own with the publication of her fourth novel The Day is Dark. (Arnaldur Indridason may be better known but Sigurdardottir is catching on quick--try saying that 10 times!)
Lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir has been recruited to lead a team to investigate the mysterious disappearance of two workers in deepest Greenland. It isn't long before other bodies begin to turn up and the team itself is threatened. The plot may sound familiar, with elements of horror akin to John Carpenter's The Thing, but it's really the historical and cultural details that set this book above the genre. The names are a bit difficult to follow (ie. two characters with the unfortunately similar names of Alvar and Arnar) but any Montrealer in winter can empathize with the setting.
"So tell me about the head that you went to collect without knowing anything about it", is Thora's question to new client Markus, implicated in a crime that took place decades before. The backdrop of a volcanic eruption has helped to conceal multiple murders recently uncovered by excavations in Ashes to Dust and the only witness has just been discovered, an apparent suicide.
Sigurdardottir's third crime novel has somehow snuck in under the radar at the same time as her fourth. Luckily it's not really necessary to read her books in order. I'm just glad I can finally pronounce the author's name.

What more could you want than a dog, a book and a blog?