Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Marsí and Stína are teenage sisters living with their parents in a small town in Iceland.  One is pretty and popular, the other not-so-pretty and not as popular.  It’s Stína, the pretty, popular one, who disappears and is never found.

Home Before Dark is narrated in turn by each sister.  The story opens in 1977, exactly ten years after Stína disappears and is presumed dead.  When Marsí returns home from work, there’s a letter with her name on it inside her apartment.  And although she hasn’t received a letter from the writer in years, Marsí immediately knows who wrote it.

Ten years earlier a copy of The Week, a weekly Icelandic publication for teenagers and young adults, is delivered to their house.  At first both girls read the new magazine voraciously, but then Stína outgrows it and Marsí has the future copies all to herself.  One week a new column appears, one which immediately catches the younger girl’s interest.  It’s called Penpals, and it offers interested readers the opportunity to write to other Icelandic youth from anywhere in the country.

Marsí is then thirteen, but she decides to tell her new penpal Burgur that she’s sixteen and lists all her sister’s hobbies and interests as her own.  She also signs the letter with her sister’s given name, Kristín, Stína being the common nickname for Kristín.

Finally, after a year of correspondence between Marsí and her penpal, they agree to get together.  Burgur writes that he hasn’t been “entirely straight” with her and “really wants us to meet.”  Although she’s apprehensive, Marsí also wants to meet, so they arrange to link up at a bridge near her home.  She’s obviously very excited, but somehow she falls asleep and misses the appointed time.

That same night, Stína’s bloody jacket is found by the bridge, but Stína isn’t there.  She never returns home, and her body is never found.  Ten years later, there is no solution to her disappearance.

Marsí goes to visit her parents, as she always does, on the anniversary of Stína’s disappearance, although it’s a date they would all like to forget.  And after all those years, everything comes together for her–the truth about her mother’s past and her problems, the truth about her sister’s last evening, and the truth about her own penpal.

Eva Björg Aegisdottír is another of the outstanding Icelandic mystery authors, a list that includes Ragnar Jónasson, Arnaldur Indridason, and Yrsa Sidurdardóttir.  On the Crime Fiction site, it’s noted that although Iceland has the lowest crime rate in the world, it has an amazing number of outstanding crime writers.  Could it be that since there’s so little violent crime in the country, talented writers have had to create their own literary versions of it?

Home Before Dark is a compelling mystery, with characters dealing with issues readers will understand even if they don’t agree with the manner in which they’re handled.  Marsí and Stína are very recognizable as teenagers with their individual problems, some of which take them into dangerous territory.

You can read more about Eva Björg Aegisdottír at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.