|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Chris Ould's new work attempts to match his writing to the cold, isolated, maritime mood of the Faroe Islands. Time moves at its own rate there, and human forces cannot hope to match nature, only to learn her ways. THE BLOOD STRAND, despite the gory title, is understated, quiet and modest. A murdered man washed up on the beach needs to be identified. Despite the maneuverings of the upper brass to keep the names of important citizens from appearing in crime reports, dogged work by the Faroese police force, with the help of Jan Reyna, a cop visiting from London, uncovers the names of the murdered and the murderer.
Dramatis personae: Jan Reyna, a London cop relieved of duty for unspecified reasons who has reluctantly returned to the Faroe Islands where his estranged father lies near death; Signar Ravnsfjall, brutal and wealthy self-made fishing and shipping magnate and Jan's father, in a deep coma following a mysterious encounter; Tummas Gramm, a young man with a mysterious wound; Nóa Lisberg, a frightened young man who may be a stalker; Magnus Ravnsfjall, Jan's half-brother whose eyes are on his father's wealth and who wants nothing but for Jan to leave; Kristian Ravnsfjall, who has a peculiar relationship to his step-daughter, Elin; Hjalti Hentze, longtime Faroese detective, thoughtful and thorough, who moves beyond the rules to move his case forward; the black dog—Jan's depression, which visits him at times and may have caused his mother's suicide.
I would like to clarify something: There is no blood strand. The ocean is cold, and the bodies it washes up have been cleaned of all blood. Like much in the novel, blood is washed, buried, or hidden.
When Jan Reyna, whose Danish mother fled Signar Ravnsfjall, her Faroese husband, and took her infant with her, her past became buried, her past, Jan's background, or blood. When Jan arrives in the islands to find out what sort of accident has befallen his long-estranged father, he meets instead a very angry and threatening half-brother, Magnus. When Jan, in Magnus' absence, finally is able to approach his father's hospital bed, he finds his father old, and so deeply stricken by a mysterious automobile accident that he seems past hearing or caring, burying some of Jan's past in his illness.
When it becomes clear that Jan is a law enforcement officer from London, the local police force divulge facts concerning Ravnsfjall's "accident." He was found in his car, run off the road, key in the ignition, out of gas, blood in the car, and packing a shotgun which had been fired. With the tacit approval of Hjalti Hentze, a Faroese detective, Jan begins collecting information about his father's life before his injury. In the midst of Jan's visit, a body, injured by a gun, is washed up on a beach. To find out who he is, Jan visits old fishermen and police officers, long retired, who worked back when he lived in the Faroes as an infant. With Jan, and through his eyes as a long-absent son, we visit homes snug against uncompromising weather, oceans, skies; cold and empty barns and locked boathouses. As the mysteries of his father's injury and of the body washed ashore are unpeeled, layer by layer, Jan's background, as well as the relations between the murdered man and the injured one become slightly, but not perfectly clearer. Perfection is difficult, sometimes, for humans to ask for.
§ Cathy Downs is professor of English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and a fan of the well-turned whodunit.
Reviewed by Cathy Downs, March 2016
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
|
