Talking Location With … Rachel Wolf: ABU DHABI
Murder mystery set in REYKJAVIK
9th May 2025
Murder Under the Midnight Sun by Stella Blómkvist, murder mystery set in Reykjavik.
TR: Quentin Bates
If you’re not already familiar with Stella Blómkvist, you first need to know that she is both the pseudonym of the author and the name of the protagonist of this Icelandic Noir series. Stella is a one-off character; a single parent and a lawyer, she’s single-minded, determined and inclined to seduce people. I’ve read a few of her books now and she definitely grows on you!
Stella is asked by an aristocratic Scotsman to look into the disappearance of his niece, Julia MacKenzie, in Iceland some nine years earlier. The girl was a geology student who had been travelling around the country on a motorcycle, seeing Iceland’s geological marvels for herself. She failed to return to Scotland as planned and nobody seemed to have seen her since. Stella begins by checking the original police investigation and teases out some new leads, but it is likely to prove a huge challenge.
Stella joins an old friend, Rannveig, who wants to film a piece about her and nearly loses her life when she falls into a crevasse on a glacier. This would be dramatic enough but she discovers an arm, complete with distinctive finger ring, frozen into the very ice that has trapped her. Whose could it have been?
In order to top up what she refers to as “the Stella Fund”, our heroine agrees to advise a journalist friend, Máki, who is writing a book with a Deep Throat source about spying in the Icelandic government. When two bodies are discovered in a fire, Máki reveals that the male victim was his source. It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to work out that powerful forces with too much to lose might be behind the deaths – or was a simple case of jealousy? This case proves to be a real hornet’s nest and Stella has to battle to discover the truth.
Unlike other Icelandic authors, Stella doesn’t make much allowance for foreign readers possibly not knowing much about her country’s geography. As the action shifted from place to place, I found it enriched my reading to have a map application open in order to trace the characters’ journeys. The author certainly makes the most of the wild and varied landscape in which the book is set; describing remote farms, natural features and urban locations. As the title suggests, the phenomenon of almost 24-hour daylight during the Icelandic summer plays a big part in the plot. And, if you know how the Icelandic naming system works, there are a few tantalising clues to be spotted!
This is a book about power politics, about idealism and the links that connect seemingly unrelated events. You can rely on Stella to get to the truth but she has to work quickly to save anyone else getting hurt.
I love the relationship between Stella and her young daughter, and the way she fearlessly tackles those in a position of power. I am learning to ignore the verbal ticks that punctuate the text and the little epithets, allegedly sayings from her mother, that conclude most (but not all) chapters. Stella’s sexual antics are an implausible distraction and sometimes seem gratuitous. Maybe the author is, after all, a man? Whatever the author’s identity, this is another enjoyable book and I hope there are more to come.
Sue for the TripFiction Team
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