Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Snare is an outstandingly original and sexy Nordic crime thriller
Snare
What you need to know before your trail
After a messy divorce, Sonia is struggling to provide for herself and keep custody of her son. With her back to the wall, she resorts to smuggling cocaine into Iceland, and finds herself caught up in a ruthless criminal world. Things get even more complicated when she embarks on a relationship with a woman, Agla. Once a high-level bank executive, Agla is currently being prosecuted in the aftermath of the Icelandic financial crash.
Bragi, a customs officer, has years of experience tracking people like her down and spotting the latest trick in getting drugs past him. But this is a city with its own problems as the city is still covered in the dust of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption and something else is bubbling..
Travel Guide
This is a very unique booktrail to Iceland! Starting off in the customs queue at the airport and going to locations drug mules might go is quite a journey! So detailed and tense as you follow the characters see the risks and feel hot even when it’s freezing cold outside.
Most of the action takes place in Reykjavik itself with the legal proceedings and the journeys to and from the airport coming to fruition. Even the journeys from this relatively short distance are filled with tension and icy sweat on your forehead. The city seems smaller in this novel somehow, the streets seem as if they’re watching you, monitoring you, or is that just the tension of the novel? The locations are reall though, even a nice one such as the Sægreifinn restaurant at the harbour. A must visit for some time out!
Akranes
This village north of the capital makes for an interesting journey. Even going through the famous Hvalfjörður Tunnel seems more menancing and claustrophobic but in the hands of this writer, when you’re involved with the drugs trade, you can never really be at peace. Empty places with few people can seem more foreboding than a crowd.
Lilja says: “Akranes village, a half-hour drive from Reykjavík is the place where one of the characters in Snare, little Tómas, the son of the protagonist, lives with his father. I was born in Akranes and lived there until I was five years old. This little fishing village with its´ statue of the sailor in the town square is, in my mind, the ideal location for a happy childhood. Endless beaches to play on, quiet small-town life and of course the football team in their´ black-and-bright-yellow kit is also something that connects to good memories from my childhood. I was a happy child in Akranes but little Tómas isn´t, as he misses him mum so terribly.”
Trail Gallery
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrail
Read this last night and I had to write a short review now simply because it’s quite unlike anything I’ve read before. The tension, being part of a drugs run. I even feel nervous going through customs anyway so when this woman does knowing she has something illegal in her bag – I can’t imagine! The tricks that both sides use – the smugglers and the officials are quite the eye opener but it’s the conditions that have led this woman to do this are also part of the story.
The chapters work well for this story theme as they’re short, compact and they flit from one person’s story to another, one angle of the CCTV camera to another.
The novel reads effortlessly thanks to the work of Translator Extraordinaire Quentin and the tension builds and twists until a very fitting ending. But it’s the journey of cool collected Iceland, through the long dark tunnel from the capital to the frozen north that took me on a ride on many levels. It’s going to be part of Hull Noir’s reading focus and I’m not surprised.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Snare
Destination: Reykjavík, Akranes Author/Guide: Lilja Sigurdardóttir Departure Time: 2000s
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