A quote on the cover of My Soul To Take says that it is chilling, but apart from its grim subject matter, it is actually surprisingly light. Conversations and the tone of the second Thóra Gudmundsdóttir novel are often quite jokey.
In 1945, a man drops a small child into a freezing coal bunker to die. From a nearby farmhouse, someone sees him.
In the present time, lawyer Thóra Gudmundsdóttir is contacted by her client Jónas Júlíusson, who has just built a New Age hotel from a remodeled farmhouse on the Snaefellsnes peninsula. He wants her to look into whether he can claim damages from the previous owners because of ghosts on the property. Thóra reluctantly agrees to come to the hotel to investigate.
Shortly after Thóra arrives there, Birna, the project’s architect, is found brutally beaten and raped on the beach. Thóra thinks that Birna was investigating something about the property. In any case, Thóra finds herself looking into her case because Jónas is a suspect. Thóra’s German friend Matthew, with whom she began a romance in the previous novel, joins her there. Just when it’s possible that the police might have believed the murder is unconnected with the hotel, another body turns up, that of the hotel aura reader.
As I said, this novel is surprisingly light in tone. Even more surprisingly is how it deals with Thóra’s children, who seem to be there only for light comic relief. Thóra’s 16-year-old son has made his girlfriend pregnant, and Thóra has left them and her younger daughter with her ex-husband. But she learns mid-case that her son, who doesn’t have a driver’s license, has left with his sister and pregnant girlfriend to drive to Thóra. On learning this, Thóra does nothing for several hours and then tells her ex where to pick them up. When, surprise, surprise, the children arrive the next day, Thóra basically ignores them. They have no apparent personalities except silliness and disobedience. It’s hard to understand why Sigurdardóttir even decided to make Thóra a mother.
One more very picky thing. At the opening of the novel, Thóra is dealing with a client who is having a dispute with the post office because the mail slot in his door is at the wrong height. The story is he bought a kit house from the States. But I’ve never seen a door for sale here with a mail slot already in it., and most people in the U. S. have mail boxes, either attached to the house or at the street. You seem to only see slots in old city neighborhoods on old doors. This just seems like an oddly wrong detail for her to have come up with.
I enjoyed the first book in this series but don’t think I’ll bother with the third.
whatmeread 
Hmm, all sounds a bit shallow. I’ll be reading the first one soon so I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it. I’ve found her quite mixed – I’ve loved a few of her more recent books and been left underwhelmed by others.
That seems to be what I’m finding.
I love Icelandic authors, and this sounds like another good one.
I actually decided not to read any more by her based on this book, not that it was bad but I didn’t like how she handled the children arriving or why she even added that to the book. I don’t have anything against children, but if you’re going to have them in the book, have the characters interact with them, don’t just put them there.
I just read Lilja, Sigurðardóttir’s Cold as Hell, and was disappointed as well. Funny, they have the same surname, but I think the ‘dottir’ ending is common in Iceland.
Yes, I think they recently stopped this convention, but it just means daughter. Used to be that Rolf’s son had the surname Rolfson and his daughter was Rolfsdottir. So anyone named Sigurðar would have a daughter with that name. However, they stopped doing it, I think in this generation or maybe the last one, and just kept the father’s surname (or mother’s, I suppose, if there was a reason for that). I would think it would in one way be easy to trace your lineage, but given a set bunch of first names, would make it harder in another way.