Silence of the Grave By Arnaldur Indridason

Inspector Erlendur wouldn't be out of place in any number of British or Scandinavian crime novels. In his fifties, divorced and depressed, this Icelandic sleuth shares the Nordic mindset of Kurt Wallander or Inspector Rebus. Indridason's latest Erlendur mystery, translated by Bernard Scudder, opens with a grisly vignette: a pink-faced toddler gnawing on a human bone. The police are called in, and a shallow grave is disovered nearby. Indridason's conventionally cool narrative voice suits a cast of characters who want to keep their darker secrets under wraps.