The Girl by the Bridge

May 8, 2023
Past and present are deeply intertwined in Indridason’s knotty yet rewarding second outing for retired Reykjavik detective Konrád (after The Darkness Knows). The plot is deliberately tangled: at the start, Konrád is investigating the disappearance of a young woman on behalf of her prominent grandparents, who are eager to avoid publicity about their granddaughter’s involvement with drugs. Eventually, he finds the woman dead, seemingly of an overdose, though Konrád has his doubts. Meanwhile, a medium named Eygló—the daughter of a friend of Konrád’s long-deceased father—has a vision of a girl who died in a Reykjavik pond in 1961, and enlists Konrád’s help to find out more. Konrád is skeptical of Eygló’s abilities, until his own ongoing investigation into his father’s unsolved murder turns up clear evidence of the woman’s clairvoyance. Before long, Konrád becomes determined to find the hidden connections between the trio of criss-crossing, decades-spanning killings—of his father, the girl in the pond, and the woman who “overdosed.” Indridason spins his multilayered narrative into an unnerving story of old crimes and their enduring reverberations, bringing it all to a powerful and well-earned denouement. This a treat for fans of brainy, complex mysteries.