Boys Who Hurt by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir
Dark secrets from the past threaten everything ...
Fresh from maternity leave, Detective Elma finds herself confronted with a complex case, when a man is found murdered in a holiday cottage in the depths of the Icelandic countryside – the victim of a frenzied knife attack, with a shocking message scrawled on the wall above him.
At home with their baby daughter, Sævar is finding it hard to let go of work, until a chance discovery in a discarded box provides him with a distraction. Could the diary of a young boy, detailing the events of a long-ago summer have a bearing on Elma’s case?
Once again, the team at West Iceland CID has to contend with local secrets in the small town of Akranes, where someone has a vested interest in preventing the truth from coming to light.
And Sævar has secrets of his own that threaten to destroy his and Elma’s newfound happiness.
About the author
Born in Akranes in 1988, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland to write her first novel. Her debut thriller The Creak on the Stairs, was published in 2018, and won the Blackbird Award in Iceland. Published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, it became a digital number-one bestseller worldwide, was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories and won the CWA John Creasey Dagger in 2021. Girls Who Lie, the second book in the Forbidden Iceland series was shortlisted for the Petrona Award and the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, and Night Shadows followed suit. In 2024, she won the Blood Drop Award for Crime Book of the Year in Iceland. With over 260,000 copies sold in English alone, Eva has become one of Iceland’s – and crime-fiction’s – most highly regarded authors. She lives in Reyjavik with her husband and three children.
Review
‘Boys Who Hurt’ is a brilliant mystery that deals with trauma and revenge! This is the fifth book in the series (how did that happen?!) but it can easily be read as a stand-alone mystery. I do heartedly recommend the whole series though as Elma is one of my favourite characters.
Elma has just returned to work after her maternity leave, whilst her partner and colleague, Sævar, is staying at home with their little girl. She isn't in for a smooth transition back to work though as she is hit straight away with a perplexing murder. Her neighbour had reported her son missing and when Elma and Horour check the family's summer cabin they find Thorgeir’s body. The police are really struggling to find any clues as to why he was killed but Sævar might have stumbled on a big one as he finds a diary in their new home…
This is a brutal murder and the case is full of mystery, both in the present and in the past. Told in various timelines - the present, from the victim just before the murder and then the past. It makes the reader hungry for more as the author drip-feeds you tasty morsels of information. This was a really page-turner and I devoured it in one day. There is something I just love about Eva’s writing. There is nothing unhurried about it. The words flow as if they are a gentle wind, pleasurable but piercing and destructive when needed. For me, the devastation that occurred off the page was just as powerful as what was on it. As Honour states towards the end of the book, he knows these people, this town and never once guessed. There are plenty of misdirection and red herrings to keep you guessing and as a reader, I was clueless right up to nearly the end!
Elma is a great protagonist as she is decidedly normal! Apart from her sad backstory with her last partner, she is quite a normal person and I love that about her. It makes her so relatable and you feel as if you are on the journey with her as she investigates her cases. Plus, her relationship with Sævar is very functional but full of love and relatable because of that. People meet at work and fall in love all the time. However, she is brave and loyal and very intelligent! I can't wait to read more about her journey.
Let me know if you pick this one up!
