It’s 1983 in a small town in Northern Iceland. A nurse arrives early to her job and finds her boss dead and seemingly tortured on a desk. The police arrest the sanatorium’s caretaker but don’t have enough evidence to hold him. The case is never solved but the subsequent suicide of the hospital’s director points the finger at him as the killer. Twenty years later, a criminology student is writing his Master’s dissertation about the Death at the Sanatorium. He begins focusing the subject matter of his dissertation from a simple discussion of police methods to solving the crime himself. In the meantime, the student’s relationship with his live-in girlfriend is deteriorating slowly.
I usually love Nordic police procedurals. However, Death at the Sanatorium just didn’t hold my interest very well. I could definitely see the resemblance between this book’s plot and Agatha Christie’s early novels. However, the characters didn’t feel genuine so I didn’t connect with any of them. The Icelandic setting wasn’t used very effectively to set a mood either. However, I loved the mystery. The final twist is to die for! For the plot twists alone, this book deserves 4 stars.
Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for providing me with an advanced review copy.