Title: Operation
Napoleon
Author: Arnaldur Indridason
Review: I
love this author and wish I could read Icelandic so I could read them before
they are translated. It takes years to
get one of his books because of the speed of the translation. My husband discovered this author before our
trip to visit my parents in Iceland a few years back. They were serving a mission for The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Selfoss Iceland and we took our two oldest
with us to visit them.
We read Jar City and
Secrets of the Grave before going and it gave you a view of Iceland that most tourists
are not going to see, including us. We
stayed with some friends my parents had made and found Iceland to be a
spectacular place to visit and even somewhere we could consider retiring to. The landscape is beautiful and rough, the
people are sweet and welcoming. We had a
wonderful two week trip that I will remember fondly forever.
Back to the book. This is a stand alone book not related to
this author’s series. It is a thriller that
keeps you turning the pages late into the night. A crashed plane carries a secret that could
destroy US relations with the world. The
plane is lost in a glacier in 1945 only to resurfaces in 1967 and again in
2000. The glaciers in Iceland take
things an then years later give them back, causing the US to mount a group to
find and recover the airplane at last…hiding the secret forever.
Lots of things happen
that were not in the plans and that add to the suspense and wonder. Many deaths and questions hang in the air and
even the last two words at the end of the book still make you wonder. What really happened and who knew about it
all?
If you like
mystery/thriller you will enjoy this book.
It moves fast and keeps you reading.
This is an author not to miss if you love a good mystery…his series is
fabulous also.
Publisher: Published October 1st 2010 by HarvillPress (first published 1999)
ISBN: 9781846552854
Copyright: 1999 Translated 2010
Pages: 327
Quick Review: 5 out of 5…I love this authors work.
Why I Read It:
Checked out at my local library.
Synopsis: From the CWA Gold Dagger-winning author
of the Reykjavík Murder Mystery series comes an international thriller sweeping
from modern Iceland to America and Nazi Germany at the end of World War II.
1945: A German bomber flies over Iceland in a blizzard; the crew have lost
their way and eventually crash on the Vatnajökull glacier, the largest in
Europe. Puzzlingly, there are both German and American officers on board. One
of the senior German officers claims that their best chance of survival is to
try to walk to the nearest farm and sets off, a briefcase handcuffed to his
wrist. He soon disappears into the white vastness. 1999, mid-winter, and the US
Army is secretively trying to remove an aeroplane from the Vatnajökull glacier.
By coincidence two young Icelanders become involved--but will pay with their
lives. Before they are captured, one of the two contacts his sister, Kristin,
who will not rest until she discovers the truth of her brother's fate. Her
pursuit puts her in great danger, leading her, finally, to a remote island off
Argentina in search of the key to the riddle about Operation Napoleon.
Author Biography: Arnaldur Indridason (Icelandic: Arnaldur
Indriðason) was born in 1961, the son of an Icelandic author, Indriði G.
Þorsteinsson. Having worked for many years as a journalist and critic for an
Icelandic newspaper, he began writing novels. At one week in the summer of
2003, his crime novels occupied the top five spots in the Icelandic bestseller
list. He is best-known for his series about the detective Erlendur Sveinsson.
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