THE LOST HOUSE, entertaining cold-weather family tragedy story

THE LOST HOUSE
MELISSA LARSEN
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In Melissa Larsen's The Lost House comes the mesmerizing story of a young woman with a haunting past who returns to her ancestral home in Iceland to investigate a gruesome murder in her family.

Forty years ago, a young woman and her infant daughter were found buried in the cold Icelandic snow, lying together as peacefully as though sleeping. Except the mother’s throat had been slashed and the infant drowned. The case was never solved. There were no arrests, no conviction. Just a suspicion turned into a the husband did it. When he took his son and fled halfway across the world to California, it was proof enough of his guilt.

Now, nearly half a century later and a year after his death, his granddaughter, Agnes, is ready to clear her grandfather’s name once and for all. Still recovering from his death and a devastating injury, Agnes wants nothing more than an excuse to escape the shambles of her once-stable life—which is why she so readily accepts true crime expert Nora Carver’s invitation to be interviewed for her popular podcast. Agnes packs a bag and hops on a last-minute flight to the remote town of Bifröst, Iceland, where Nora is staying, where Agnes’s father grew up, and where, supposedly, her grandfather slaughtered his wife and infant daughter.

Is it merely coincidence that a local girl goes missing the very same weekend Agnes arrives? Suddenly, Agnes and Nora’s investigation is turned upside down, and everyone in the small Icelandic town is once again a suspect. Seeking to unearth old and new truths alike, Agnes finds herself drawn into a web of secrets that threaten the redemption she is hell-bent on delivering, and even her life—discovering how far a person will go to protect their family, their safety, and their secrets.

Set against an unforgiving Icelandic winter landscape, The Lost House is a chilling and razor-sharp thriller packed with jaw-dropping twists that will leave you breathless.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'll always say yes to cold-weather thrillers. After all, I read, then watched, The Terror with the gruntled hygge of a true Northerner. Now you're waving Bifröst in my face?! Sign me right on up!

The sleuths are, to put it politely, secondary to my enjoyment of the setting. Nora, in particular, grated my nerves like a box-grater does soft cheese. If I met her in meatspace I would either do her grievous bodily harm or turn away in the first moments of listening to her whiny, manipulative BS on her podcast. I was no fonder of Agnes, again finding her crutching of the terrible physical trauma and subsequent drug dependence grounds for whining unpleasant me-me-me behavior. I suffer from grinding chronic pain, am dependent on drugs to continue living, and make a concerted effort not to do what Agnes is helping herself to: Making everything about herself, her pain, her life.

Unpleasant trait in my book. Raised my hackles.

Another hackle-raiser was the author's weird opinion of Icelandic people as credulous...treating Agnes as a sort of avatar or reincarnation of her grandmother, the murder victim, and therefore a carrier of the miasma of bad luck. It seems also a bit on the nose to call the town Bifröst, the name of the rainbow bridge between Earth and the afterlife in Norse myth. I doubt there'd be such a name chosen in Christian Iceland of the nineteenth century or earlier, and the town isn't presented to us as, say, a WWII new-build or something.

Well, anyway, those are the issues that shaved more than a star off my rating...but it's a read I'd tell you to get out of the library soon. I liked the way the author built her atmosphere of distrust at every opportunity. I found it a solid replacement for the identity of the murderer not being in the least surprising.

Bifröst is, pace its nose-thump of a name, a well-realized setting with a readily pictured landscape. It's just enough to get me over the three-star hump. I don't think these characters would, even if they could, draw me into reading a series, but I am not mad I read this book to pleasantly wile away a few hours.