Lead Review

• Book: Cage
• Location: Reykjavik
• Author: Lilja Sigurdardottir

Review Author: tripfiction

Cage is the final book in Lilja’s acclaimed Reykjavík Noir trilogy. [Click here for our review of Snare, and here for our review of Trap]. It is every bit as exciting as the first two books… It can, however, be read as a standalone.

Agla is serving the last weeks of her prison sentence for financial fraud commited when she was an officer of a bank. Her former lover and drug dealing supremo, Sonja, is holed up in London. They have not spoken in months. Maria, currently an investigative journalist and formerly in the state prosecutor’s office, approaches Agla to help with a project she is working on. Agla is also approached by a consortium of aluminium users… The two approaches come together. Something very strange is happening with aluminium produced in Iceland and then shipped for storage at facilities in the States. It is not sold and world prices rise. But stock-piling is illegal – has a way been found around the regulations? Agla is involved because of her knowledge of financial fraud.

Sonja then returns to Iceland from London. She has been cut out of a major drug deal, and fears for her future (and here life). She and Agla inevitably meet. They, in fact, meet when Sonja visits a prisoner and mule in prison to ensure her ongoing co-operation with the drugs gang. She does not know that the prisoner, Elísa, is Agla’s new lover. She is an addict, very troubled, but hoping for a better life.

And there is one more strand to the story. Two teenage boys source explosives and bomb equipment with a view to making a very violent statement.

The strands, of course, all come together in the end. And it is a great finale.

If you like your thrillers full on, then Cage – and the rest of the Reykjavik Trilogy – are quite definitely for you.

Recommended.

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