Peter Tremayne: Valley of the Shadow

The sixth of Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma mysteries, The Valley of Shadow, finds Fidelma on her way to the remote western mountains of Cruacha Dubha, the homeland of Laisre, chieftain of Gleann Geis. Laisre and his lands remain pagan, but he has recently sent to King Colgu of Muman, Flidelma’s brother, saying he is willing to enter negotiations to allow a priest to come to his chiefdom, to build a church and a school. Colgu has appointed Fidelma as his emissary, thinking her best suited to speak on behalf of both himself and the church, as a princess of Muman, a religieuse, and a dalaigh. Brother Eadulf accompanies her.

But as they approach the mountains, Fidelma and Eadulf are met with a horrific sight. Thirty-three young men, all monks or priests by their tonsures, ritually killed and left by the road into Gleann Geis. Is it a warning? A threat? Despite the danger, Fidelma is determined to carry out her mission, but now she has another task as well - to find out who is responsible for the murder of her brothers in Christ.

This time, Fidelma finds herself in the midst of not only a negotiation over a request that no one but the chieftain appears to want, but an investigation into a horrific mass murder, and a complex plot against her brother’s throne. A solid mystery, with many twists and turns, it’s also an interesting look at Irish temporal and religious political conflicts in the early years of Christianity in Ireland.

Yrsa Sigurdardottir: Why Did You Lie?

Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s novel “Why Did You Lie?” opens with a dramatic scene - a helicopter attempting an open sea rescue of a person reported lost at sea near an isolated lighthouse on a rugged rock formation offshore. What the occupants of the helicopter see is two bodies at the base if the rock tower, and at the top, beside the lighthouse, two people, one on the ground, the other kneeling over him with a knife. The date is January 28, 2014.

The timeline then splits, going backwards, to tell us about four people headed to the lighthouse two days prior - Helgi, a photographer, and Ivar, Tóti and Heida, making a scheduled maintenance visit.

Even further in the past, January 20, and we are with Nina, a police officer who has recently gone through extreme trauma. Her husband has survived a suicide attempt but is severely brain-damaged. She has been the victim of sexual harassment on the job, and a demoralising experience when, during a domestic assault call, the husband assaulted her as well and her partner just stood and watched. After issuing a complaint, she’s been banished to the dead files room in the basement to do clerical work. One if the first folders she opens to work on, unexpectedly, has a misfiled page - one that mentions her husband, and a statement he gave when only a teenager, twenty years ago.

And from January 23, a family returns from holiday. Nói, Vala and their son Tumi have been in the US, after arranging a house swap with an American family visiting Iceland. When they arrive home, they are unhappy to find the the Americans have left some things behind, and have not left the keys to the house and their chalet where they were asked too - in fact, the keys are missing altogether.

There is no hint, initially, of how these threads will be connected. Just mysteries. What happened at the remote lighthouse on Thrídrangar? Who put that page in that file fir Nina to find, and why? And what is it that seems subtly wrong about the departure of the Americans?

As the three timelines advance, odd things begin to pile up - creating an eerie feeing of suspense and discomfort, not quite fear at first, but growing toward it. This is something that Sigurdardottir does with consummate skill. You know something is wrong, you know it’s going to be bad, the only question is, how bad will it be?

Like so many of Sigurdardottir’s suspense novels, the evil behind the strangeness, the fear, the pain and death that follow, has its roots in the past, in darkness that has never been brought into the light, in madness born of loss and grief. And like the horror stories that Sigurdardottir borrows her sense of building atmosphere and tension, when all the threads come together and the full picture is revealed, something of the evil remains leaving us to fear what will come after.