The Silence of the Sea

I am a fan of Scandinavian detective noir. A couple of weeks ago I critiqued Yrsa Sigurdardottir in The mystery is not the murders in the book but what the author is doing with and to her protagonist.

In all three instances the subversion takes the form of a female protagonist who behaves in some ways just like a male detective protagonist for most the time. But at some point, the author seems compelled to introduce a couple of devices.

[snip]

The second device that parallels the first is an attempt by the author to accentuate the femininity of the protagonist which, to me, always reads as an exercise in tropes and stereotypes. The protagonist becomes obsessed with their relations with a male, they focus on their appearance, they need a female confidant, they dither, they do stupid things like getting drunk and having sex with someone they intended not to. I think in the author's mind they are trying to reinforce the fact that this is not a male protagonist who happens to have a female body. They want it clear that it is a female psyche (however we might identify that) in a female body and therefore they are trying to build up the female factor. But in doing so, it comes across as heavy handed stereotyping and a casting of the protagonist as a helpless victim.

But the plotting was good and I enjoyed the book overall despite the subversion.

The most recent in this series is from 2014, The Silence of the Sea by Yrsa Sigurdardottir. Much, much better.

The protagonist, Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, at least returns to center stage. Sigurdardottir still seems to be trying to get across capricious femininity but it is much less heavy handed. The plotting in The Silence of the Sea is excellent. It is a combination of murder mystery and sea adventure using a dual parallel story structure which has a most unAmerican ending, making it striking. Very much enjoyed this one.