Icelander

This is a book I admired more than I enjoyed. On paper it's catnip for Matt: an dazzling debut novel, a adventure / mystery in an 'Icelanders influenced North America' world, where Our Heroine is the only daughter of a famous crime-solving Icelandic detective couple, which was written about famously in a slew of novels that are like Watson to a Holmes. And there's a deep bench of funny characters and there's a big meta story about Our Heroine being hassled by the expectations of inheriting her mother's big Gumshoes. And it's peppered thru with Northern myth stuff (the dog is called Fenris Dachshund!) And it's footnoted to death with further explanations of the publication history surrounding her mother. But it's... too clever, with too many ideas and explanations. And as an actual book, an actual story, it just doesn't feel like it's going places. Give this guy a stern editor and I'd happily try his next novel.

Noted on September 4, 2025