THE BODY IN THE BATH finishes some things, leaves others hanging, and starts new ones

THE BODY IN THE BATH (Helgi Trilogy #3)
RAGNAR JÓNASSON (tr. Philip Roughton)
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the bestselling author of The Mysterious Case of The Missing Crime Writer comes the next mystery featuring detective Helgi Reykdal.

As snow blankets Reykjavík and Christmas approaches, young detective Helgi is looking forward to a quiet holiday―until those plans are torn away in a flash. One month after his girlfriend Aníta is killed in a car accident, he returns to work in Reykjavík, haunted by loss and rage. The driver―Helgi's ex-girlfriend Bergþóra, a violent alcoholic whose abuse he kept secret―insists Aníta's death was an accident and walks free.

To escape his mounting despair, Helgi throws himself into the unsolved disappearance of his predecessor, Hulda, a retired officer long presumed dead. But as he follows the traces she left behind, the lines between her past and his present begin to blur . . .

When Bergþóra is later found lifeless in her bath, suspicion falls squarely on Helgi. With his own colleagues turning against him, can he uncover the truth in time?

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

My Review: Bergþóra/Bergthora dies!! I was a teeny bit bummed because there was no loving description of her death agonies, nor was Helgi poppin' champagne corks and dancing through Reykjavík in joyous abandon. Of course, Aníta is recently lost to that car accident...here's a good place to strongly caution you to read the stories in order...so it makes some sense.

It's how Hulda and Helgi, arrayed against the time-serving 'tude of their colleagues on the police force who lack the zeal for justice and the satisfaction of conducting the chase after the truth those two share, in their shared love of Golden Age crime writers, always put a foot down, then the other, then repeat until the trail ends...usually with the murderer at the end...that makes these such good reads. It means the Wimseyness of Ellerying out a resolution to murder keeps them going, keeps we-the-reader flipping pages.

Hulda, whose PoV we follow in two timelines, is an excellent detective who has vanished in the book's present. Helgi reads the books she's known to be reading during a case from 30+ years ago that Helgi thinks will explain her disappearance. The list is at the front of this book, so you'll never lack for ways to acquire clues. That 1980 case is one I'd expected to be the key to discovering Hulda's disappearance that her lovely colleagues in the book's present simply can't get worked up about. Helgi believes these men came up with the idea that Hulda ran away so they just wouldn't need to work the case, so he relentlessly follows her case in 1980...whan she solves it...and nothing doing on more help figuring out why she's disappeared.

After that disappointment, Helgi's lazy colleague Máni propounds the theory that Helgi murdered his murderin' ex so he needs to arrest him. How startling, one of Helgi's colleagues does not think on his level and sees an easy way to score a W without needing to do a lot of leg- or brain-work.

Here's where that quarter-star pulled a Hulda and vanished. There's a wat that it all works with Máni and Helgi ending up the same place at the same time to have the murderer of Bergthora confess and explain why that murder took place. It's convoluted and kinetic and, while it takes us where the resolution to the charges against Helgi are made clear, it does not fully end the story.

That's both good...I like the way Helgi works and want more...and annoying because it gives Helgi a reputational hit. I trust Ragnar to make that work into the plot. I also want to slug Ragnar for the Hulda-in-1980 rugpull. You're evil, Ragnar.

When's the next one coming?