The Silence of the Sea
SynopsisPlot
As The Silence of the Sea opens, a luxury yacht crashes into a Reykjavik pier. But the boat is empty; no one is on board. What has happened to the crew? And what happened to the family who was very much present when the yacht left Lisbon? What should Thora Gudmundsdottir, the series sleuth, make of the rumors that the vessel was cursed? She is spooked even more when she boards the yacht and thinks she sees one of the missing children. Where is Karitas, the glamorous young wife of the yacht's former owner? And whose is the body that has washed up further along the shore?
Story
About this book
A luxury yacht drifts into Reykjavik harbour with no one on board. When it left Lisbon, a family and crew were aboard. Now the vessel is empty, and no explanation is obvious. Thora Gudmundsdottir, an Icelandic lawyer who has investigated strange cases before, is hired by the missing father's parents to find out what happened between the two ports. The premise sets up a locked-room puzzle spread across open water, where the absence of witnesses is the central problem.
Thora's investigation pulls in several threads. Rumors follow the yacht, claiming it was cursed well before this voyage. Karitas, the glamorous young wife of the boat's previous owner, has also disappeared. A body washes ashore near the harbour, raising questions about whether it is connected to the empty vessel. When Thora boards the yacht herself, she believes she catches sight of one of the missing twin children, an encounter that unsettles her and deepens the case.
Yrsa Sigurdardottir is an Icelandic author whose crime novels often use the country's isolation and harsh landscape as backdrop. The Silence of the Sea is part of her series featuring Thora Gudmundsdottir, and it builds its tension around the gap between Lisbon's departure and Reykjavik's arrival, a stretch of Atlantic Ocean where anything might have occurred.
