An evening with Yrsa

Michael and Stan - Thursday

Yesterday we shared the platform with our friend, wonderful author, and erstwhile blogmate - Yrsa Sigurdardottir. Yrsa is in South Africa on a book tour centred on Woordfees, which is a mainly Afrikaans book festival based in Stellenbosch. Why not? It's in the middle of the best wine country in South Africa!

It didn't start well. The event was about half an hour outside Cape Town. Half an hour until this happened...

An hour and a half later, we reached the bookstore and settled our nerves over a double cappuccino before the event. Yrsa and Ole arrived in good time from the opposite direction looking cool and fresh.

A nice crowd at Tygervalley Exclusive Books

The main focus of the event was Yrsa's new series with detective Huldar and psychologist Freyja of the Children's House. They were introduced in The Legacy, where, as Yrsa explained, she tired of knives and stranglings - guns aren't available in Iceland - so she invented a completely new method of murdering someone. And she followed that up with another in the second book in the series - The Reckoning. (No spoilers. You'll have to read the books. By the way, The Legacy is on special on Kindle for $2.50 right now...)

Huldar is a smart detective, but has issues with relationships. He and Freyja are thrown together by a case in The Legacy, and Huldar decides she is a woman he would like to know better than over one night. It's not a match made in heaven, and it gets even more complicated in the second book.

Yrsa says that in choosing the protagonists for a new series, she felt that the characters need some flaws. As she put it, "Ordinary people aren't very interesting."

A good question

We had a chat about Sunshine Noir versus Nordic Noir, and as usual teased Yrsa about how few murders are actually committed in Iceland in a year - less than all the people killed in the books of Icelandic crime writers. But she told us that the The Reckoning is based on an actual case of a man who attacked, raped, and murdered a little girl. He had abused his own children for years, and he and his father pulled strings to ensure that the children's pleas to the police for help were ignored. When he was found guilty of murdering the child, he was given Iceland's maximum sentence - 16 years. Many people weren't satisfied by that, especially when he was released after some 12 years for good behaviour.

Apart from flawed protagonists and inventing new weapons, Yrsa had an interesting take on her ghost story - I Remember You. Michael asked her why she decided on a book with a paranormal aspect. She said that a mystery story starts with high tension and eases off as the the story unfolds. A horror story works the other way as the tension builds. She wanted to see if she could marry the two to keep the tension high the whole way. It succeeds brilliantly. 

Yrsa signing The Reckoning

Afterwards we had lots of questions and we all signed books. After thanking the great staff at Exclusive Books in Tygervalley, we adjourned for a fun dinner hosted by Jonathan Ball Publishers. What a pleasure to spend time with Yrsa and Ole. And a privilege to speak to Yrsa about her writing and ideas. Looking forward to another occasion!

Thanks to Jennifer Ball for the pictures of the event.